


Busted Saddles

by UNHhhh



Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: 60's western, F/F, Romance, Smut, boot nasty, cowgirls, just two girls casually falling in love no big deal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-16
Updated: 2018-08-21
Packaged: 2018-11-14 17:23:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 49,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11212704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UNHhhh/pseuds/UNHhhh
Summary: Busted Saddles is the best honky tonk bar in town, if you ask Katya. Of course, it’s one of only two in her small Tennessee town. The other, unaffectionately called the Wasteland but whose proper name is Duckie’s, is filled with lonesome cowboys crying into their tequila and writing songs about their lovers one state over in Kentucky, and Katya isn’t about to become one of them.She suddenly has the frightening thought that she’s one shitty poem away from joining their ranks and catches up with Pearl, who’s been two steps ahead of her this whole time.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [campholmes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/campholmes/gifts).



> Listen I've been wanting to write cowgirls for a while, and it's taken me like a whole month to birth it but here it is. 
> 
> This is 1969 Cowgirl Realness, with a whole lot of feminism and LGBTQ+ attitude.
> 
> Special thanks to matilda_queen for giving me the title name, artificiallale for always being there to scream positive things at me, and campholmes for being the Katya to my Trixie.
> 
> Hit me up on [Tumblr](https://kirschebombe.tumblr.com/) if you want, I'll talk your ear off.

If there’s anything Katya wants in the world more than anything else, it’s a woman.

Of course, she would never admit that to anyone. Not even Pearl, the woman down the road with the impossibly large garden who delivers a crateful of fruit to her every Sunday evening and pries into her life. Katya lets her, of course, it’s not like she has that many people to talk to, and Pearl is proving to be a good friend- even if her intricate knowledge of everyone’s business back in town makes Katya little nervous.

Her desperation for someone to call her own has lead her down many dead-end roads. Most of the time they’ve involved dodging older and well-built brothers swinging at her for touching their baby sisters. She’s learned how to be undercover with her looks and touches; she knows how to make a fleeting glance feel like a full-on conversation. She stalks the corners of the town’s bars, eyes the beautiful women dancing in full skirts from her splayed-out position on a creaky wooden chair. She doesn’t let them see her watching, and when they catch her, she’ll tip her Stetson at them and wink, and every once in a while one will come up and ask her name. As if she’s a tumbleweed rolling through town, as if no one knows who she is.

But everyone knows. They all know Katya’s gay, she’s weird, she breaks horses for farmers on the outskirts of town and if she wasn’t so good at her job no one would ever call upon her for her services. She’s learned to use her skills as her upper hand, she likes the look in the older men’s eyes when they fork over hundreds on top of hundreds for a job well done, fearing that she probably spent the previous evening with her head between the legs of their granddaughters.

What they don’t know is that Katya spends her nights alone now, after Violet ran off with her heart and all semblance of trust. Pearl’s told her time and again that it’s what she gets for falling in love with a woman who’s never been loyal to a soul, and Katya has to agree with her, but it doesn’t keep her from clutching the pillow next to hers at night and sniffling into the perfume-less air.

Katya’s never not been loyal. Everything inside her body is loyal, she teaches it to her horses and she lives it every day. She’s gotten her fruit from Pearl since Pearl had moved out to the countryside from her parents’ home in town, five years after Katya had done the same. She’s gone into town on Saturday afternoons in her blue Chevy pickup truck to buy vegetables from the farmer’s market for ten years now. She buys Levis and red flannel and blue bandanas, her Stetson is the same one her grandmother had bought her when she turned eighteen. On her birthday, she makes herself a Jameson and Coke, and on Christmas she sits outside in the snow and listens to the carolers echo down the dirt road.

Katya’s steadfast and strong, she treats her women like queens, and Violet had walked all over her, stomped inside her small home in her pumps, made a mess of everything, lassoed Katya’s heart and left without a second look, dragging it behind her in the dirt.

“You should go out tonight,” Pearl says over her mug of black coffee before taking a sip. 

She’s sitting at Katya’s kitchen table, watching her wash her few dishes in the tiny sink. Pearl wants Katya back to her old self, the one that shares her Playboy magazines with her and asks her about the newest women in town with glinting eyes.

Lately, Katya’s been tired and quiet, introverted. Pearl thinks that’s stupid, she tosses her long blonde hair over her shoulder and pulls Katya to dance with her in the little living room of Katya’s home, swaying to Hank Williams on the radio, willing Katya to laugh just once. When she does she’ll let her go, let her sink into her armchair and sigh. Her smile always fades and Pearl is at the end of her rope, she’s got only a few more tricks left up her sleeve, but she’s determined to make Katya happy.

“Why?”

Katya sounds like she doesn’t really care to know the answer, but Pearl’s got it locked and loaded and they both know it.

“Because it’s Lady’s Night, and word on the street is that everyone’s daddies are letting them out of the house tonight.”

Katya’s head lifts a little at that. She pauses her annual scrubbing of her cast-iron skillet, stares out the window ahead of her into the field behind her house.

“What for?”

“Debutantes holding onto their family tradition against their will and turning it into a party, which translates into drunk young ladies looking to get some,” Pearl smiles and nudges Katya’s calf with her sandal. “I think you’d have some fun.”

“And what about you?” Katya drops the skillet into the sink and wrings her hands off on the dishtowel tucked into her pocket. She turns to look at Pearl and recognizes her look immediately. “Please, Pearl, do not-“

“It’s been too long!” Pearl stands to face Katya. Her arms are crossed but her face is mirthful.

Katya hooks her thumbs into her belt loops and sighs.

“Have you maybe ever thought that’s for a reason?”

“Katya, if you mope any longer or lower you’re gonna melt into the ground.”

“Pearl, I can’t be myself here, that much is obvious-“

“I’m not taking no for an answer-“

“There’s too much at stake, this is my livelihood, they already hate me-“

“You’ve got a tight ass and a big heart and it’s all going to waste out here in the country-“

“Who asked you, anyway?”

Katya checks Pearl’s shoulder as she passes her, rounds the corner to the living room.

She knows it’s from loneliness, Katya’s attitude, but Pearl can’t help but feel a little slighted and hurt at her rude remark. She knows Katya is thankful for their friendship- she’s said it enough times in enough ways- she realizes she should just take a deep breath and walk into the living room, try to strike a deal with her, so she does.

“Okay, I’m sorry, I realize sometimes I live through other people and I should stop that,” Pearl sits on the floral couch across from the TV, cattycorner to Katya in the armchair. She’s got her arms crossed on her chest and she’s staring down at her boots. “But I just want you to be happy. You’ve been so sad since Violet left you, and I want to strangle her until her name is fitting, but that’s neither here nor there.”  
Katya giggles a little, and her smile spreads into a grin.

“Yeah, I want that too.”

“Okay, so that’s something we can put on the backburner for now,” Pearl says seriously, and Katya laughs again. “But really, Katya, I just want to see you the way you were before. You’re such a happy person, so positive and thoughtful, and I want it back. Let’s go out tonight, in our best clothes, we can drink and watch the women dancing and if you see someone, you can talk to them! And if not, that’s okay too. Please just go out with me!”

Pearl moves to kneel in front of Katya’s bony knees and Katya laughs full-on now, musses up Pearl’s hair and uses her head to push herself into a standing position.

“Okay,” She sighs, pulls Pearl up by her hands swiftly. “We’ll go out. But I’m only going to talk to someone if I really am floored!”  
“Katya, girl, I wouldn’t expect anything less from you. Pick me up at nine.”

 

 

Pearl wasn’t lying- everyone was out on the town. 

Katya’s Chevy rumbles up to the last parking space available at Busted Saddles and she pulls in slowly. Pearl is already half out of the truck by the time Katya kills the ignition, her blue prairie dress catching the night wind and fluttering around her knees. Katya ambles behind her excited form in her favorite red plaid flannel. It’s worn smooth with use and so is the dark denim of her jeans.

Busted Saddles is the best honky tonk bar in town, if you ask Katya. Of course, it’s one of only two in her small Tennessee town. The other, unaffectionately called the Wasteland but whose proper name is Duckie’s, is filled with lonesome cowboys crying into their tequila and writing songs about their lovers one state over in Kentucky, and Katya isn’t about to become one of them.

She suddenly has the frightening thought that she’s one shitty poem away from joining their ranks and catches up with Pearl, who’s been two steps ahead of her this whole time.

At the door, the line is longer than normal, and Katya’s surrounded by women in dresses with huge skirts, a few are in miniskirts like the women in the big cities wear out. Their hair shines in the light of the full moon, they’re all chain smoking and it’s making Katya itch for her pack in her back pocket. One woman stands beside her in her black A-line dress, kitten heels clacking together as she knocks them back and forth. She drops her half-smoked cigarette and rubs it out beneath the patent shoe and slips past Katya and Pearl, giving Katya a sweet smile as she passes her.

Katya suddenly wishes she’d undone her braids. She looks like a twelve-year-old in her daddy’s cowboy hat and boots and her hair in two plaits framing her face, but Pearl isn’t giving her any time to run back to the truck and fix her hair because she’s pulling her by the wrist through the crowd, pushing through women and a few men and finding Ginger at the door, arguing with a patron.

“Well this is why barely anyone is getting in,” Pearl mumbles, then pushes the woman out of the way and grins at Ginger. “Minj! How are ya?”

“Pearl, am I glad to see you!” Ginger is readying her stamp at the small table set up by the front door. She leans over and stamps the two without a second thought. “Only room for a few more people in there. Get in while you can. And have fun.”

Ginger winks at Katya at that last part and Katya is blushing, smiling a little and nodding in thanks while Pearl pulls her through the big double doors.

Busted Saddles is always smoky and packed, the dance floor is teeming with women kicking up their heels and laughing over one another. Drinks are sloshed across the wooden, lacquered bar, sliding down lengthways and landing in practiced hands with painted nails. Katya likes to pick a corner and sit in a chair, nurse her tequila and lime and watch everyone laugh and dance and drink. She likes to observe, find a pretty girl and follow her with her eyes, catch a glimpse of her ordering a drink on the other side of the bar when she goes to refill her own glass.

Tonight, Pearl’s found two empty seats at the bar, somehow, and she’s ordering two tequila shots each before Katya can stop her.

“I didn’t say I was gonna get drunk! I have to drive,” Katya protests, but Pearl merely holds a hand up and shoos her words away.

“You’re gonna do these with me and then I’ll turn you lose, okay? Just promise you’ll slow dance with me once tonight.”

Pearl’s already scanning the crowd, finding the women with bandanas in their back pockets and combs on the right sides of their hair.  
When the shots come, they slam them down on the counter and throw them back, and then Pearl is a blur in the crowd, and Katya is leaning against the bar on her elbows, watching the women move in time with Johnny Cash.

One song turns into five and Katya’s yawning a little, running her boot back and forth on the lower rung of the wooden bar stool. She’s anxious to go home; she hasn’t seen anyone she’d like to approach, and thankfully she hasn’t seen Violet or her gang, either, but it’s well past her bedtime and she has to get up in time to hand off a horse in the morning.

The bar is sticky underneath her elbows, where she rolled her shirtsleeves up to cool off in the crowded heat. The stool beside her remains empty, somehow, through all the people coming up to the bar and ordering. They simply leave, and Katya’s gotten enough sideways glances to figure out why. She doesn’t pay it any mind, or she tries not to at least, and lets her eyes relax.

She’s lost in Friday’s schedule when someone in a pink swing dress sways to sit down beside her, orders a double tequila neat, and throws back half of it in one go. Her big blonde hair bounces with her movements, and then she’s spinning on the stool to mirror Katya’s position.

She nudges Katya’s elbow with her own and leans over a little. Katya’s stomach is in knots already.

“Pretty dead in here, huh?”

Katya can hear the smile in the woman’s voice, and when she looks over to return it, she comes face to face with bright blue eyes and big pink lips turned up.

Katya blinks furiously, then nods shyly and looks down a little.

“Barren. Wasteland has a bigger crowd.”

“Oh my God, have you ever been there before?” She laughs easily. Katya realizes she’s going to carry this conversation and she relaxes a little in her easy attitude. “It’s awful.”

“I only go when I need a confidence boost,” Katya shrugs, and she laughs again, louder, her head tilts back and the ends of her curls dip down into Katya’s empty shot glasses.

She moves her drink to her left hand and holds her right one out.

“I’m Beatrice. You can call me Trixie.”

“Nice to meet you, Trixie. I’m Katya.”

They shake hands and Trixie’s soft and warm against Katya’s calloused palms. Her eyes are soft, too, and she smiles at her serenely.

“Nice to meet you, too. You come out here a lot?”

She’s sipping her drink and scanning the crowd; she’s so cool, unaffected by the glares the less dolled-up women are giving her after seeing who she’s speaking with.

“I used to. Not as much anymore,” Katya shrugs. 

“Well why not? Lady’s Night is a riot,” Trixie turns back to face her. Her drink is almost empty and she swirls the pathetic excuse for a cut of lime around the barely there tequila.

Katya takes a deep breath and decides in a split second not to make this Wasteland 2.0.

“It’s just not been a priority. My friend Pearl dragged me out tonight, something about debutantes. You want another drink?”

Suddenly Katya’s fishing in her pocket for her wallet and Trixie’s eyes are scanning down her body to land on her tanned forearm flexing. Trixie nods and watches as Katya pulls a few bills out of the worn leather wallet and then slides it back deep down into the denim.

“I’d love another double, actually. Neat.”

Katya spins in her seat and as she flags down the bartender, some hunk in a plaid shirt a size too small and jeans of the same variety, she feels her blood rushing to her skin again, warming up her frozen limbs. Her brain chugs along slowly.

When she spins back around with Trixie’s drink her knees knock into hers where she’s sitting sideways now, resting her head on her fist propped up by her elbow on the counter. Katya hands her the napkinned glass and Trixie nods her thanks before sipping it slowly. 

“Debutantes,” Trixie nods again. “Yeah, we’re out in full force tonight. First weekend of the season.”

“You’re a debutante?” Katya’s eyebrows shoot up and she takes in her figure properly for the first time.

Her dress doesn’t look homemade at all, now that she’s staring at it. It’s got a heart-shaped neckline and little white lace appliques accenting the short sleeves. It reaches her knees, where the white tulle of her petticoat peaks out. Her shoes are shined and black patent, though they look worn in around the balls of her feet.

Trixie laughs a little and Katya’s attention snaps back to her face, where her eyelids are painted light blue. Her blush extends to her hairline, the soft blonde curls pushed back from her face by a thick white headband. The green neon tints her hair yellow but Katya bets it’s white blonde in the sunlight. She wants to take her out during the day and find out.

“Yeah, I’m a debutante. What, ya want me to leave you alone now or something?”

Trixie’s eyes are glinting as she rests her glass against her lips, the waxy pink coating rubbing off on it a little.

Katya shakes her head and takes off her Stetson before mirroring Trixie’s pose, balancing her hat on her knee, where it rests against Trixie’s.

“Not at all. I just didn’t take you for that kind.”

“I don’t know why you wouldn’t, look at this ridiculous thing!” Trixie gestures to her dress and laughs, her chest bounces with the sound and Katya can’t help but glance at where her breasts are pushing out over the low neckline. 

“It’s- nice!” Katya offers with a blush, and Trixie laughs again, her glass swaying out between them where it threatens to spill onto Katya’s hat. If it did, she’d sooner just buy a new one than yell at her for it.

“You’re so funny,” She grins. “Why are you over here alone? Where’d your friend go?”

“Pearl? Oh, she’s off chasing tail, probably,” Katya waves her hand in the general direction of the dancefloor, where she knows that’s exactly what Pearl is up to. Her feminine looks give her an easy in with women, and her occupation gives her a slick excuse of “teaching them how to garden” when their husbands come knocking at her door. Katya’s seen it work too many times to ever expect it to fail.

“And you’re just gonna sit here and wait for her?”

Katya stares at Trixie, who’s back to rubbing her glass against her lips. She cocks an eyebrow and Katya can see the mischief in her eyes even though her face is angelic.

She shrugs.

“I haven’t exactly found anyone worth speaking to. Until you sat down.”

Her angelic face smirks and then Trixie is throwing the rest of her drink back and pulling Katya by the hand towards the dance floor. Her Stetson almost falls but Katya catches it and flips it onto her head in one practiced movement as she slides through the crowd with her new friend.

Katya doesn’t fight it, being tugged between perfumed chests and overdone ‘dos. She doesn’t tell Trixie to slow down when she stumbles on her own boots and almost face plants into Pearl, who’s nestled between two women and smiling serenely. When she catches Katya’s eye she cheers and pumps the air with a fist resting around one of the women’s shoulders.

Then there’s a small clearing on the floor and Trixie spins around, her petticoat kicking up, and she grabs both of Katya’s hands and smiles sweetly.

“Wanna dance?”

Katya laughs a little at her boldness as a slow country number comes on. Of course, she thinks as she slides her hands around Trixie’s waist. They rest perfectly at the swell of her big hips and Katya has to think about anything else in the world to keep the blush off her face.

Because Trixie’s close enough she can smell the tequila on her breath. Katya can see her big eyelashes fluttering when she blinks as she wraps her arms around Katya’s neck, clasps her hands on the back of it and slips her thumbs into the base of Katya’s braids. Even in her pumps, she’s a good few inches shorter than Katya, and that means she can lock eyes with her and her hat isn’t in the way, and Katya both loves and hates that.

Like a good debutante, Trixie lets Katya lead their dance, though she can feel her energy wanting to take control. Trixie keeps staring up at Katya with a small smile, and then she’s sliding her gaze down her face, past her lips and chin, to the tendons in her neck and the top button Katya never bothers to do up on her shirt. Trixie bites her lip a little and Katya tears her eyes up to stare at her big hair, willing herself not to press Trixie up against the wall and kiss her deep like she wants to.

Suddenly she’s hit with the realization of how long it’s been since she’s been with a woman. Far too long, she thinks, the longest it’s been since she’s moved out into her own place, and she wonders how she ever let Violet have such a grip on her life. Even five miles away, in town, probably tied up on some old rich lady’s bed, Violet’s got a vice on Katya.

Trixie lays her head on Katya’s chest and nuzzles her cheek into her breast and Violet’s grip is loosened almost completely. Raven hair is replaced with white blonde in Katya’s mind, and she smiles a little as she rests her chin on Trixie’s head.

There’s still a large, undulating, loud crowd all around them, Patsy Cline’s voice is reaching over the noise as Katya sways slowly with Trixie. Their feet are barely moving with their dance, Trixie’s are planted between Katya’s boots and her whole body is touching hers where it can, and Katya’s got goosebumps from the contact. She spots Pearl in the corner of the bar with one of the women from before, she’s giving her secret little kisses when she thinks no one’s looking. Katya’s going to have a truck full tonight on the way back home, when she drops off Pearl and her new lover.

What about Trixie?

What _about_ Trixie? She’s just out here looking for a good time, looking to announce herself and her newfound adulthood to the world, Katya reasons with herself. She won’t wanna go home with anyone, and even if she did.

Even if she did.

Katya’s brain won’t let her comprehend what comes next, so she sighs and pulls her closer, spreads her fingertips out wide where Trixie’s hips meet her backside. She can feel Trixie’s throat rumble against her chest.

The song ends sooner than Katya wants, sooner than she remembers the song ending at any other point in her life. And Trixie is pulling herself back up to smile once again at Katya. Trixie lifts a hand and pushes a stray hair from Katya’s face, tucks it behind her ear and rubs her earlobe a little, and Katya shivers. Her mouth drops open slightly, and Trixie’s eyes dart to the movement. Her eyes are darker than they were three minutes ago. 

“How late you staying out?” She asks Katya from beneath her lashes.

“Why? You need a ride home?” Katya says.

Trixie shrugs and flips a braid back and forth between her fingers.

“Mama and Daddy think I’m going to Max’s, but she’s going to her boyfriend’s parents’ cabin out by the lake.”

“Lake Winona?” Katya whistles. That’s money.

Trixie nods and looks a little shy, but Katya can tell she’s not going to stop there.

“And, well, I don’t exactly wanna go home, not on the first night of the season…”

Katya waits for her to finish her sentence, but Trixie only looks up at her with a small pout.

Katya blinks and rubs a thumb against Trixie’s hip.

“You wanna come home with me?”

Trixie’s pout turns into a grin and she nods, gives Katya a quick, big hug before stepping back and holding her hands again.

“Yes! Yes, oh, that would be great, thank you,” Trixie sighs happily. Her eyes glance over at the wall and Katya knows she’s checking the time. “How late are you wanting to stay out?”

Katya can’t really believe this is happening, but she supposes it’s her life now.

“I was actually about to leave before you sat down next to me,” Katya smiles, and Trixie grins back at her.

“Lucky me. Should we go find your friend?”

 

 

Katya, Trixie, Pearl, and a woman named Jinkx are trotting to the Chevy at the end of the parking lot. Pearl’s completely entranced with her evening’s date, touching the myriad of pearls hanging down her chest and tripping over a crack in the concrete because of it.  
Trixie laughs at her and skips ahead of the group easily, her dress flouncing behind her.

“Kat, you never slow danced with me!” Pearl’s drunk and yanking on one of Katya’s braids, shuffling her feet along.

“You were occupied, weren’t you?”

Pearl grumbles and then giggles and Katya doesn’t have to turn around to know what’s happening, which is good, because she doesn’t _want_ to turn around. She wants to watch Trixie skip down the crumbling sidewalk to her pickup truck.

“Last one, right?” She calls behind her, and Katya nods, then agrees out loud, and Trixie picks up her speed.

Katya’s not sure how Trixie can practically run after having at least two tequila doubles and Pearl can barely stand after two shots and probably a couple of beers, but she likes it, Trixie’s ability to do what she wants no matter what’s in her way. 

When they reach her truck, Pearl swings open the passenger door and jumps inside.

“Hold on!” Katya hollers, and everyone quiets down at her sudden change in tone. Trixie’s standing at the hood of the truck, hands perched on it daintily, watching her interaction with Pearl with glittering eyes. The white streetlight above them shows her hair better; it’s white-blonde, shining like a beacon in the night. Katya does a double take before she can look back at her friend.

Pearl looks at her through the driver side window.

“Get out,” Katya jerks a thumb over her shoulder, and Pearl begins to whine. “No, don’t gimme that. There are four of us and three seats, and the middle seat is for my hat.”

“We can fit!” Pearl insists, but Katya shakes her head. She’s done this enough times to know Pearl won’t keep her hands to herself underneath all that tulle, and the last thing she wants to do is scare Trixie off with her wild, drunk friend.

Though the fact that she hasn’t gone running back to her Debutante friends by now says a lot about her. Katya isn’t too worried, she guesses. Still.

“You know what you have to do if you want a ride home.”

Katya holds Pearl’s glare until she slowly backs out of the truck, rounds to the bed and pulls down on the tailgate handle. 

“C’mon, Jinkx, we get the scenic seats tonight.”

Jinkx looks too drunk to care, and she shrugs with a smile and Pearl lifts her into the backseat.

Katya turns to look at Trixie, her hair falling over her shoulders and hiding her chest from view. Katya doesn’t even care.

“It’s all yours,” She waves towards the cab, and Trixie grins huge, rounds to the door and hoists herself into the truck.

Katya follows and closes the door behind her, then boosts Pearl up into the truck bed before closing it up.

“I can’t believe you,” Pear rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling a little, Katya can see it in the buzzing white streetlight above her truck.

“Sure you can. Like old times.”

“Katya’s back, everybody!”

Katya rolls her eyes as she swings herself into the truck and starts the engine before looking over at Trixie, who’s watching her with a serious gaze. Her chest is visibly rising and falling, and Katya doesn’t remember being able to see that earlier, not even when they were chest to chest, dancing so slowly.

“You sure?” Katya asks, takes off her hat and sets it in the seat between them.

Trixie picks up the Stetson and slides over to the middle seat, drops it where she was sitting moments earlier. She puts a soft hand on Katya’s thigh and smiles a little.

Katya’s barreling out of Busted Saddles faster than she should and the two can hear Pearl and Jinkx laughing drunkenly in the bed, rolling side to side with Katya’s jerking movements.

The drive out of town is always quiet and dusty. The only thing that breaks the silence is the gravel kicking up in the truck’s wheel wells, the fuzzy AM radio playing low, and the two women’s shouts from the bed. 

Trixie’s twisted herself around, opened the middle panel in the back window, and is hollering a conversation back and forth between the other two about something involving Elvis Presley. 

Katya’s life in this moment is such a change from her previous weekend, when she drank herself stupid and sobbed into her pillowcase over a woman who probably doesn’t even remember her last name. This morning she was cleaning her house in an effort to forget about her completely, and now she’s driving a beautiful young woman home to her small wooden house, where she’s going to kiss her until her lips are raw and swollen, and she’ll stay up too late, but it’ll be for a good cause, and she won’t even complain in the bleak morning when she has to conduct business with the sun just barely up. And she hopes Trixie will still be there, clad in her bedsheets and doe-eyed.  
Katya realizes she’s going entirely too fast on the dark dirt road when she hears Trixie laughing loudly, slapping her skirts with her hands excitedly and stomping her feet.

“Faster!” She laughs. “I wanna go faster!”

“You’re a little daredevil, aren’t you?” Katya grins lopsided, glancing over at Trixie and then her speedometer. 

She knows she can take it up to 115 in her Chevy- she and Pearl have done it too many times to count- and she presses down on the accelerator a little harder.

The engine revs and her headlights cut out for a short moment before they shine bright again, and Trixie screeches with laughter, throws her head out of the open window and yells into the dark night.

Katya’s laughing at her wild attitude, at the sound of Pearl yelling in the bed of the truck and pounding her fist on the worn blue metal. She’s going close to one hundred, she knows there’s a turn coming up and so she lets off the accelerator, slows down to a more reasonable, but still fast, speed.

Trixie pulls her head back into the cabin with a pout, looking at Katya like she just stole the fun from the entire world.  
“I was having a good time!” Trixie says.

“You wouldn’t be up on this turn up here! Tell Pearl and Jinkx to hold on, would ya?”

Katya doubles down on her steering wheel as she downshifts and Trixie turns to warn the other two of the impending curve, and then plops back down on the seat beside Katya.

“You ready? It’s not a little turn,” Katya warns, and Trixie laughs wildly again.

“I’m ready! I’m ready.”

Trixie grips Katya’s shirt just under her armpit and Katya’s stomach clenches as she turns into the curve without another warning. She’s taken it this fast many times before and her stomach’s never done that.

Then they’re flying around the turn, practically sideways in the cab, and Trixie is squealing, digging her nails into the inside of Katya’s thigh and side, and Pearl and Jinkx are screaming in the bed. She can hear them rolling to one side and it makes her laugh, the kind of laugh that hurts because it’s so deep-seated. 

The dirt is flying up around them, landing inside the cab on Katya’s face and Trixie’s dress. Trixie’s hair is whipping in the wind and hitting Katya in the face, but she isn’t letting go of the steering wheel until they’re back straight, no matter how much she wants to bury her hand between Trixie’s thighs and make her gasp louder than she already is.

Trixie’s panting when they’re around the curve. Katya drops her right hand from the wheel and grabs Trixie’s knee over her dress.  
“Was that fast enough for you?” Katya looks over to face her quick, and Trixie’s face is flushed in the dim light from the headlights. She looks speechless, her eyes are wide and her lips are parted, she’s too busy catching her breath and clutching her ample chest. 

She nods, and Katya smirks, turns back to the road and slows down again. “We’re at Pearl’s place. I live just up from here. HEY PEARL!”  
Pearl jumps up with a grunt and then Katya’s pulling into the dirt road leading to her house that looks more like a fairy cavern than a home for a human. 

The Chevy’s headlights illuminate the ivy growing across the stone façade, the bright pink flowers that have cropped up all over the yard. Pearl’s land backs up to a forest, and Katya knows she spends some of her time in there, but she doesn’t know why.

Katya breaks in front of her front door and she shifts into park, then sits back and waits. She and Trixie listen to the sound of Pearl and Jinkx scrambling to open the bed of the truck, slide out, and then Pearl’s closing it up and leading Jinkx by the hand to her front door.

“Goodnight,” Katya calls from her window, and Pearl turns back to her and grins huge. Her eyes are so glassy Katya can see it in the dead of night.

“You too,” Pearl winks.

“Bye!” Trixie leans over Katya and sticks her head out the window. She waves at Pearl, who drops Jinkx’s hand and runs back to Katya’s window.

Trixie’s chest is pressed up against the door. The dip of her lower back is right in front of Katya’s face, the tulle of her skirt is sliding on either side of her backside and hanging down over Katya’s hands, it’s warm. Katya pulls it between her fingers and tugs at the material a little.

“Listen,” Pearl says breathlessly to Trixie. She’s inches from her face, and Trixie laughs a little, hums a question. “She’s a little rusty, so go easy on her, okay?”

“Hey!” Katya leans over in an attempt to get a glance at Pearl, who’s cackling and skipping back to meet up with Jinkx at her door.  
Trixie’s shouting with laughter, walking herself with her hands back to her seat beside Katya, touching her thighs, her knees, her tanned forearms. She looks up at Katya with an amused expression.

“Rusty, huh?”

“Please,” Katya mumbles and jerks the pickup into drive. “Pearl doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

“I thought she was your best friend!”

Trixie’s laughing at her blatantly, loving Katya’s blush and set jaw, and Katya turns a circle in Pearl’s lawn a little harder than she needs and Trixie yelps and slams into Katya’s side, clutches her again.

Katya drives through a worn trail across the field on the other side of Pearl’s house and wraps her arm around Trixie’s middle once she’s in a good gear.

“Do your best friends talk about you like that?” She asks into Trixie’s hair that’s tumbled down her front. Trixie nestles into her side and runs her hand across Katya’s knee.

“My friends don’t know what it means to be rusty,” Trixie smirks, and Katya laughs, squeezes her waist a little.

“In what way?”

“In the way that they’ve never touched themselves, let alone another.”

Katya laughs again and Trixie joins in this time.

“And what about you?”

Trixie’s giggles die down and she’s looking down at her hand, watching it trace circles dangerously close to Katya’s inner thigh.  
Katya can feel the tension between them snap when Trixie looks up at her with dark eyes again.

“Everything they’ve ever heard about sex, they’ve heard from me.”

Katya’s eyes bug a little before she looks ahead again, navigates through a short line of trees. Her home is up ahead and she’s clenching a little at the sight.

“That your place?” Trixie asks, and Katya nods, unwinds her fingers from where they were tangled in Trixie’s skirts and she moves to grip the gearshift between Trixie’s knees. 

She shifts down, slows and rolls up to the gravel driveway leading up to the rusted red barn in her backyard, where she puts it in park, leaving the engine running, and looks at Trixie.

“Home sweet home.”

Trixie looks expectant, she looks excited and like she can barely contain herself. She’s seated sideways on the seat and her knees are touching Katya’s thigh, she’s gripping her skirts and biting her lip. God, Katya can feel the heat radiating off her, soaking into her own skin, making her sweat underneath her flannel and blue jeans. Trixie’s breathing is loud again.

Katya doesn’t know she’s kissing her until Trixie’s moaning against her lips, holding her face between her soft hands and tugging at the baby hairs that have escaped her braids.

Her lips are softer than anything Katya’s ever pressed her own against, and they’re moist, they move against her slow and gentle and with confidence, like she knows exactly how to kiss Katya to drive her wild, and Katya wouldn’t be surprised if she did. 

She’s gripping her impossibly small waist, digging her blunt nails into the fabric and scraping against it, and Trixie grunts and moves a hand to pull Katya’s up to her chest. Katya’s eyes cross under closed lids and she sighs into her mouth, and Trixie’s tongue traces her lower lip as she massages her through her dress. She can feel how heavy and full her breasts are through the fabric, she wants to touch them bare, run her tongue flat against them and suck them into her mouth.

Trixie’s breathing is getting heavier and she hikes a leg over Katya and straddles her. Katya moves her other hand to Trixie’s ass, she’s pulling up her skirts and petticoat as fast as she can, and then she’s gripping into silk underwear and a soft, warm ass. Trixie moans into her mouth more, licks her teeth and tugs on her braids a little.

Her nails scrape down Katya’s neck and move to pop the buttons on her shirt, and Katya grips her ass tighter, massages the muscles under ample fat, brings her other hand to grip her other cheek. 

The engine’s still running, cool air flowing through the vents and prickling Katya’s skin, pushing Trixie’s hair into her face as she kisses down her chin, her neck, until she meets the thin skin of her chest and nips at it. Trixie yelps and grabs onto her shoulders and throws her head back as Katya licks at the skin that’s visible above her sweetheart neckline. Katya wants to rip the fabric between her strong hands and watch Trixie’s tits pop out, burst out from under the pressure of her clothes, and she wants to take them into her hands and squeeze hard until Trixie cries sweet tears.

Trixie's pressing her ass back onto Katya's fingers and they're slipping down the satin. Katya can feel how wet she already is, it's soaking through the fabric and when Katya slides her hands down the backs of her thick thighs she's dragging the ghost of it with her. It’s enough to make Katya want to scream, but she knows she can’t. She can’t do a lot of things, especially with Trixie squished between her and the steering wheel, her breasts pressed up against her chin, her soft stomach heaving against hers, toned and slick with sweat. 

Katya can feel the heat rising in her and she doesn’t know how much more she can take of Trixie’s little moans before she’s going to need to shove her fingers inside her mouth to gag her- or maybe tie her bandana around her and gag her proper-

"Wait, wait," Katya gasps. She pulls back and Trixie's looking down at her, her lipstick pulled every which way.

"What," Trixie breathes. She looks so annoyed and it sends a jolt up Katya’s spine.

"I like this, I do, but…"

Katya looks over Trixie's shoulder, at the big barn behind her. It's needed a fresh coat of paint for longer than Katya's lived here. She’s never gotten around to it, partially because she’s afraid of heights and she’ll need to use a damn cherry picker to get it completed.  
Her mind blanks out and she can hear Trixie giggle, feel her breath dancing over her baby hairs, the shell of her ear.

"So you _are_ rusty." 

Katya tickles her thighs and she squeals a little and Katya has a fleeting, violent urge to flip her onto her back and shove her fingers as far up her as she can, for as long as she can, as fast as she can, until the world ends or Trixie can’t come anymore, whichever comes first.

"No! I just…I want to make sure we're both okay with this." 

She’s trying so hard to breathe normally, speak with an even tone and not give away the fact that her insides are screaming for Trixie’s.

"Oh honey," Trixie pulls back and looks at her with amused eyes. "I've been okay with this since I saw you sitting all by your lonesome at the bar."

Trixie rubs herself down on Katya's thigh and her eyes flutter shut.

"C'mon," She sighs. "I can't take this anymore."

There's a moment where Katya's brain melts and then she's shutting down the engine, pushing open the door of her pickup, lifting Trixie up by her waist and hoisting her to the ground. Trixie's laughing as Katya hops down after her and then she's got two calloused fingers pressed against her lips and Trixie's eyes flash.

"Shh. You’ll wake the horses," Katya motions with her head to the barn. "Their owner's coming tomorrow and they need to be in top shape."

"You train horses?" Trixie asks, muffled around her fingers. She grips Katya's wrist and pulls her fingers away, and Katya wishes she had pushed them past her lips instead.

Katya swallows and nods.

“Yeah. Family tradition. C’mon, the bugs’ll get you out here.”

“I know, I’m too sweet.”

Katya snorts at Trixie as she leads her by the hand to the back door. She flips through her keyring in the dim yellow light of the bulb perched overhead and finds the right one, unlocks the door.

They rush in and Katya swats out moths as she shuts the door. She locks it back, slides her hand up the glazed hardwood to flick the lock at the top.

As soon as she turns around, Trixie’s pressing her up against the door, and the blinds are clacking noisily against the window but Katya can only hear the guttural moan coming from herself as Trixie slides her hand around to Katya’s ass and squeezes it.

Trixie’s kisses are slow and languid. There’s a spark on the end of them, like someone lighting a long fuse connected to a block of dynamite, and Katya can’t wait until it wears down. She wants to speed it up, blow on the little sparks to make it flame faster, burn brighter.

There aren’t any lights on in her kitchen, and Katya knows the contours of her home well enough to not need them, and since Trixie’s eyes are closed and her body is practically glued to her, Katya decides to keep it dark; she wants to hear the way Trixie gasps when her hands land on her shoulders, slide down her arms slowly- her skin is so warm, the backs of her arms feel like her thighs, smooth and soft.  
Katya grips Trixie by the elbows and walks her backwards into her bedroom. She turns her around corners slowly, catches her when she stumbles on the change from hardwood to carpet and giggles into her mouth when Trixie yelps a little. Her mouth is sweet, like tequila gets with just the right amount of lime- Trixie’s a shot of top shelf tequila chased with a juicy, ripe lime- Katya’s soaked just thinking about how she must taste everywhere else.

Her flannel is halfway unbuttoned and she’s got one hand on the back of Trixie’s head, the other one tugging on the hidden zipper of her dress as the inch into her bedroom, the last door on the left down the short hallway, but it feels endless, like something out of the Twilight Zone. In the dark it’s black and white, blue highlights shine in Trixie’s curls, the white lace of her dress.  
Katya kicks open the door to her bedroom as soon as they reach it. The only light comes from a solitary orange streetlamp across the road and It just barely lights up the room, just enough to see the chest at the foot of her bed and the dresser across from it, the small desk against the window with that morning’s coffee cup still waiting to be drunk.

Trixie’s moaning against her lips, slipping a hand under Katya’s shirt and rubbing against the cotton of her bra, teasing a nipple between her fingers. It makes Katya’s skin burn, she hisses as Trixie pulls and twists at it a little. She’s pressing her hips against Katya’s, and Katya knows she wants some friction, any friction, and she does too.

Her zipper is finally undone all the way and Katya steps back, slips it off her hurriedly, and the orange light is behind Trixie, fluttering with the cotton curtains in the breeze coming through the open window. It highlights the frizzy halo of hair around Trixie’s head, the little blonde hairs raised up on her skin with her goosebumps, the way her fingers are clinching at her sides and how she’s knock-kneed in anticipation.

Katya can see her white underwear biting into her waist and fitting the contours of her hips perfectly, coming to a stop at the tops of her thighs, slipping down between them and disappearing amongst the flesh. Her bra is silk, too, and white, mostly lace. 

Trixie’s tucking her fingers into her underwear, and Katya stops her, pulls her hands back by her wrists.

“Let me,” She whispers, and Trixie huffs in amusement.

“You’re fully clothed, cowgirl.”

Katya knows Trixie can see her eyes clearly in the light, so she stares at her hidden ones with an intense gaze as she finishes unbuttoning her flannel. She slips it down her strong arms and lets it drop to the floor before she begins unbuckling her belt. The large buckle in the shape of Tennessee pops off with a loud click and Katya hears Trixie gasp a little, she can see one of her hands going to the front of her underwear and the other one gripping her breast. 

Katya takes off her belt, whips it out of the beltloops and smacks it against the floor, takes the blue bandana out of her back pocket and tosses it onto the bed- just in case- Trixie moans outright- and then she’s unbuttoning and unzipping her fly and her jeans are peeling off her thighs. She knows Trixie can see her white bikini briefs, she can see her quads flexing as she steps out of her boots, then her socks, finally her jeans.

Then they’re standing in front of each other, underwear bright in the night, Katya’s sweat glistening on her chest and stomach.  
Trixie lunges forward and down and Katya feels her hot, wet tongue licking up her core, sucking against salty skin, and they’re both moaning. Katya’s gripping her hair, digging her blunt fingernails into her scalp a little and scratching it. Trixie’s on her knees in front of her, she’s gripping her thighs, tracing the outlines of her muscles and tendons, and she’s still sucking on her skin, leaving little dark marks that Katya’s sure glad will be hidden from the world, only hers to see when she takes a shower in the morning, gets dressed.

“God, Trixie,” Katya sighs. She wishes she had something to lean back against, it’s taking all of her strength to stand up, her muscles are clenching and she can feel Trixie’s tongue flex against her abs, dip into her belly button, and then she’s pulling away with a smack of her lips, looking up at Katya with big eyes, gripping her hips tightly.

“Give it to me,” Trixie whispers.

Katya’s lifting her by her armpits and tossing her onto the bed, her curls are flying after her and she lands on the soft downy mattress with a grunt and a giggle, she’s scrambling towards the head of it, her thighs are jiggling with the movements and Katya lunges after them.

She pulls her down the bed a little with her arms hooked underneath her knees and before she can comprehend what’s happening she’s burying her nose between Trixie’s legs, into the soaked satin, rubbing her face against Trixie and breathing her in. She’s licking her through the material and Trixie whines high pitched, thrusts up against Katya’s face, and Katya doesn’t mind at all, she loves it so much.  
“Katya,” Trixie pants. “Mm- want you so bad.”

“Yeah,” Katya breathes against her. She sits up on her knees and pulls Trixie’s underwear down slowly, against her better judgment, she wants to see her unveiled slowly like the present you’ve been waiting for all year, gasping at the short blonde hairs and the trail of wetness that connects her to her underwear for a little bit until it gives out under the stretch. 

Katya can barely keep her head on straight, her brain is going in so many directions, it’s scrambled and all she can focus on is how wet Trixie is, how tight she looks, how she’s spreading her legs and tugging on Katya’s braids to pull her back down, and Katya has no problem following her, at all.

She presses her tongue flat against her and Trixie keens, wraps her braids around her hands like reins, how Katya controls her horses, and Katya needs to rub herself against her _now_ , she needs Trixie to touch her and make her come while she’s pulling her braids and directing her to do her bidding.

For now she’ll circle her clit with her tongue, slip a finger inside of her where she’s burning hot to the touch and so slick Katya has to try to get any friction going. Trixie’s fucking her face, pulling her braids tight and rubbing herself against Katya’s rough tongue with short breaths.

“More,” She gasps. “I want-“

Katya knows what she wants, she wants to be filled up completely, so she adds another finger, and Trixie whines and bears down. Katya twists her fingers up and around, and the friction is there now, her fingers drag with it and Trixie moans loud, from her stomach, Katya wonders if Pearl and Jinkx can hear her across the field, if everyone in town can hear how she’s fucking her good and she’s barely done anything at all, if Violet’s waking up from a nightmare, shaking and fully aware of Katya’s pleasure and the pleasure of Trixie beneath her, soaking into the sheets.

Katya’s toes are clenching in the crumpled-up blankets underneath her, she’s aching so bad and she can’t get any friction the way she’s laying on the bed, so she sits up, hisses when Trixie doesn’t let up on her braids. She tugs, and Trixie laughs, unravels them from her grip and bites her lip, smiles at Katya’s wet face and swollen lips.

Katya’s looking down at her with a fire inside of her, she could swear her eyes are burning holes into Trixie’s retinas, Trixie’s looking at her and her smile is slowly dropping, her mouth is gaping a little, and Katya grips her knees, yanks her down forcefully so her head’s flat against the bed, and then tugs her own underwear off.

“Oh God,” Trixie moans. She turns her head to watch Katya kick them off, and they go flying towards the full coffee cup a few feet away and Katya doesn’t care, she’s so horny right now and she needs Trixie to make her feel good.

She crawls to where Trixie’s gazing up at her with a look that’s so aroused Katya could probably come just from watching her expressions. She’s unhooking her bra, and then Katya does the same, they’re tossed into the darkness, and then Katya swings a leg over Trixie’s head and positions herself over her body, facing her trembling thighs.

“Am I on your hair,” Katya says with a raspy voice. Her blonde locks are too pretty to move, splayed out around her, Millais couldn’t paint her any prettier and Trixie knows it.

“I don’t care,” Trixie moans, and then she’s pulling Katya down by her slim hips and her mouth is engulfing her. If Katya’s knees weren’t on the bed they would have given out underneath her at the soft touch of Trixie’s lips grazing over hers, the little licks she’s giving her everywhere but where Katya wants her tongue. She nudges her little nose against Katya’s opening and Katya grunts, her arms slip out from under her and she buries her face into Trixie again.

It’s a mass of limbs sliding, writhing, Katya’s kissing the inside of Trixie’s knee and licking up her thigh, biting at the sensitive flesh and making Trixie moan into her as she fucks her with her tongue. Trixie’s hands are splayed over Katya’s ass, pulling her cheeks apart so she can trace her tongue over her hole so lightly Katya squeals, grinds down on her mouth and Trixie’s licking into it a little.

Katya’s got a mouthful of her thigh, the flesh is soft in her mouth and it melts around her tongue, she sucks on it hard as Trixie rubs slow circles around her clit and eats her ass, Katya’s dripping on her chin, she can feel the cool air from Trixie’s heavy breathing hitting her wetness and it’s colliding with the heat from her tongue and the heat coiling in her stomach and Katya _has_ to pull herself together, but Trixie is so good, she’s so good and Katya isn’t going to last much longer.

“Trix,” Katya releases her skin and moans brokenly, rests her sweaty head against her knee and gasps. Her breaths are getting shorter, she’s gasping high and short and she can’t catch her breath fully. The feeling of climbing a mountain is coming to her and it’s been so long she could cry, it feels so good.

Suddenly Trixie’s slipping two fingers inside her opening, rubbing against her g-spot expertly, still licking into her asshole, still rubbing her clit, and Katya can’t breathe, and then she’s screaming against Trixie’s knee, pushing back and down on her and rocking against her hands and mouth, she’s on a red sled flying down the side of the mountain, the cool wind against her face and freezing the air in her lungs.  
Trixie’s mouth leaves her ass and her fingers leave her clit, but she’s still fucking her with her other hand, pumping two fingers just fast enough to keep Katya coming against her, trembling and clenching around her.

She’s got a hand cupped over Trixie, she can’t bring herself to focus on anything else, even though all she wants to do is fuck her hard, fill her tight, as tightly as she can, she wants to bury herself inside of Trixie and never come out, her livelihood be damned, Trixie’s body is perfect and her mind is like a whip that’s cracking Katya’s ass, moving her along, training her right. Katya’s already doing her bidding, she’s not even known her for twelve hours and Katya would do anything, anything for those fingers and that mouth and those eyes.  
Trixie finally slips her fingers out of Katya and she climbs off with legs like jelly. She turns to face Trixie, sucking off the wetness from her fingers and staring at Katya with big, dark eyes, and Katya moans, she’s ready to come again even though she’s still twitching from everywhere between her legs.

“Fuck me good, right now, I’m so wet for you, you came so good,” Trixie is babbling around her fingers hanging over her teeth, pulling her lip down. 

Katya doesn’t need to be told twice; she slips between her legs again and flicks her tongue over Trixie’s clit fast, shoves three fingers inside her this time and it’s Trixie that’s screaming now, tight against her fingers and so fucking wet, Katya doesn’t know how she’s so wet.

Katya’s got new energy from Trixie’s noises, the way she’s arching her back and how hard her nipples are, how big her breasts are as she kneads them roughly, rhythmically, halftime with Katya’s tongue licking at her. Katya’s going as fast as she can, she’s holding her breath and her fingers are pulling up against Trixie quick, Katya can feel her getting wetter on her hand.

Trixie comes with a grunt, she holds her breath and a strangled moan comes from her throat, and Katya moans against her, new wetness spreading over her hand and her wrist and her sheets. Trixie is soaking them, and then her choked grunts go high pitched and she’s whining long, moaning in time with Katya’s thrusts.

She pushes Katya off her forcefully, then pulls her up by her braids to kiss her long, sweetly, and Katya can taste both of them, they taste so good together, tequila and lime and salt.

Katya crawls up the bed, slips under the sheets with Trixie and pulls her to her side. She brushes her hair from her face and kisses her ear and Trixie sighs contentedly, grabs for her hand and pulls it around her waist.

Katya can feel the tequila taking her down, sinking her into her mattress.

Then it’s six in the morning, her alarm clock is ringing beside her and she doesn’t remember ever setting it, thinks she must have done it the morning before as she slams the flat of her palm over it to shut it up.

The sun has just barely started over the horizon. The owner of the horses she’s bene relentlessly training will be here in thirty minutes to take them back, and as Katya unwinds herself from Trixie’s sleeping form to toss her legs over the side of the bed, she hopes the horses retain everything she taught them. 

They were particularly hard, these two. Breaking horses isn’t hard work for Katya, she comes by it naturally, having grown up around it and been her grandpa’s favorite. She had learned a lot at a young age, enough to set out on her own at eighteen and start her own business, but she’d been challenged this time. 

It felt good, she thinks as she brushes her teeth and stares at her sleepy face in the bathroom mirror. She’d enjoyed the challenge, having to double down on her training and take a few days longer than normal, spend longer hours with them. She’d been bit a couple of times but it was worth it, to see them listen to her at the end of their training, to watch them calm down when she ambled up to her barn.  
Katya’s excited to show off her hard work as she slips on her boots. She’s wearing last night’s clothing and she doesn’t care, she fully plans on taking them back off and slipping into bed beside Trixie when she’s done handing the horses off.

She trudges through the gravel and grass to the barn, where the horses are already awake, a little sleepy like her, and she can tell they know something is different. Probably because today she’s got two carrots for them each instead of one, and she’s being extra calm, walking slowly and murmuring to them in the orange tinged morning light.

The sound of a truck and creaky metal trailer echoes up her long driveway and she picks herself up from where she was leaning against the stable, nodding off a little in her crossed arms. She stretches high and the horses whinny.

Katya shuffles to the big barn doors and pushes them open in time to see the old farmer pulling up. She can see his lower lip full of chew even from here, in his truck with the dirty windows twenty feet away. It makes her itch for her cigarettes but these horses had really hated it when she smoked around them so she’d held back.

The owner pulls through the barn, his wheels bump over little clumps of hay Katya’s been too lazy to rake up. She meets him at the trailer and they shake hands, exchange pleasantries.

“You work hard on ‘em?” He asks.

Katya can’t even remember his name. He looks like all the other farmers up in age, sparse gray hair, leathered face and sunspots everywhere, deep deep crows feet and that wad of chew in his lip. His eyes look a little cloudy, he’s wire thin and gristly, and she thanks herself for wearing protective clothing and her Stetson all day. She’ll be a tanned old woman but she’ll at least look healthy.

“Yes sir,” She nods once, walks over to her favorite, aptly named Winnie. “He’s been the easiest.”

“Yeah, he’s a Trixie if I’ve ever seen one,” He says gruffly. The hair on Katya’s arms stands on end for a second and she scratches her neck, hoping he didn’t see her jump a little at the name. “Let’s get him in.”

Winnie walks into the trailer easily, only because Katya had done this with him multiple times for days on end. He’d been so scared at first, she was sure he’d been forced in and not calmed down afterward, and undoing someone’s bad job at teaching was harder than doing it for the first time with them.

“Marlboro was stubborn as hell but he’s listening now,” Katya offers once Winnie’s secured in the covered trailer. The farmer follows her to his stable, across from Winnie’s. 

Marlboro is snuffling, he’s a little restless and Katya hasn’t seen him like this since he was dropped off.

She has a feeling her hard work is going to go down the drain with this old man, set in his ways on being loud and forceful with his horses.

“Marlboro likes it quiet, though, I did learn that,” Katya offers gently, hoping the farmer would get the point.

He grunts and laughs instead, spits onto a wad of hay by Katya’s boot.

“Farms aren’t quiet,” He says.

Katya sucks in her bottom lip and simply shrugs, loads Marlboro as gently as she can into the trailer, and then the farmer’s shoving wads of money into her hand and shaking the other one, and he’s pulling out the other side of the barn, making a u-turn around the outside, and going on his way.

As soon as she sees his truck pull out onto the gravel road she’s sprinting back to her house, skidding to a stop outside her back door.  
She takes a deep breath and shakes off her nerves, opens the door and enters coolly. She knows Trixie will still be asleep, she doesn’t assume debutantes are up particularly early, and she finds that she’s right as she walks through her house.

Trixie’s still in bed, her face is buried into her pillow as she sleeps on her stomach, her arms and legs splayed out. Her hair is everywhere, it’s still curly but it isn’t set anymore, it’s splayed out in tangles over her head and back and both pillows.

Katya laughs a little at her then takes off her clothes and shuts the window before the summer heat can come in, and climbs into bed.  
She tucks herself underneath Trixie’s limbs, and Trixie grumbles and repositions herself in her sleep, turning to her side and hooks a leg over Katya’s. Her face is squished against the pillow and it’s puffing her cheek out, her lips are in a little ‘o’ where they’re shoved out of place, her teeth peeking out a little.

Katya smiles and tucks her messy hair behind her ear before pulling her head to her chest, and Trixie grumbles again and sighs, buries her face into Katya’s bare breasts and hums contentedly. She tucks a hand under her chin and the other one wraps around Katya’s thin waist, tucks under her on the other side.

It’s nice and cool inside, it smells like midnight still, musky and blue. The morning hasn’t reached them yet, her bedroom window facing the west, and in the dim light, Katya makes out Trixie’s freckles on her shoulders and the tops of her cheeks. She thinks she can spot the Big Dipper on the curve of her shoulder and she traces the dark dots gently. Trixie laughs breathily a little and nudges her head beneath Katya’s chin more.

Trixie smells good. She doesn’t smell like perfume, she smells like shampoo and Woman, Katya could smell her on her hands as she brushed her teeth and hitched up the horses with the farmer, and it had driven her crazy, and now she can smell her even more, in the sheets and her skin and the hand that’s slowly creeping up Katya’s back to rest on her jawline.

Katya picks her hand up and kisses the back of it and she can feel Trixie smile against her skin, her wet teeth pressing marks onto her.  
There’s the bluejay outside, right on time, singing, and Trixie hums happily and presses her fingertips against Katya’s lips before dragging them back down to her waist.

“You smell good,” Trixie breathes. Katya hopes she doesn’t feel her nipples harden against her chin and the skin of her neck, but she knows she can, and Trixie giggles and confirms it for her. “Like hay and sweat.”

“Well, I’m a workin’ woman,” Katya says low, and Trixie hums in delight. She’s back to tracing constellations in her freckles, dragging her calloused fingers over Trixie’s smooth skin, and she wants it to go on forever, Trixie half-asleep in her arms and running her toes up and down Katya’s shin, she wants to feel her heavy chest pressing against her ribcage as she breathes in heavily, sighing the sleep off of her and pushing Katya back a little.

Katya follows her push and Trixie looks up at her with big, sleepy eyes, and Katya’s floored.

Trixie glows like a lightning bug, a glow from within that’s obvious and beautiful, fluttering off and on, and right now she’s bright, a little sweaty from sleep, but her hair is framing her perfectly, flowing down her side and her chest, and her face is so round and her cheeks full, and her lips, too. Her eyes are bright blue in the daylight and Katya can’t believe her beauty translated so well from drunken Thursday night to sober Friday morning, but it has, better than she could have imagined.

“You’re,” Katya swallows. “Really gorgeous.”

Trixie smiles a soft, closed-mouth smile, it lifts her mouth up a little on one side, and she looks down, gazing at Katya’s body.

“Aw,” She mumbles.

“You want breakfast?”

Trixie looks back up at her quick and her eyes aren’t soft anymore, they’re excited and hungry and she nods eagerly.

Katya laughs and leans back in to kiss her forehead before getting back up and walking to her closet.

Trixie’s suspiciously quiet and Katya knows it’s because she’s checking her out, watching her small ass bounce back and forth as she pads over to open the closet door and rifle through her belongings.

“I’ve got a robe for you,” Katya says.

“Oh- yeah, thanks,” Trixie sounds distracted and it makes Katya laugh a little.

She grabs her dark green robe and the light pink one that’s been sitting in the back of her closet for months now, she shakes out the dust and then hands it to Trixie, who’s sitting up in her bed, sheets pulled up over her chest.

“Listen-“ Trixie starts, and Katya’s heart drops.

She shrugs on her robe and nods.

“Yeah?”

“I’m- I don’t just sleep with people,” Trixie says quickly, she shakes her head and fingers the sheets against her. “That’s not really who I am.”

“Oh, well- me neither, really,” Katya shrugs. Not as bad as she had expected.

“I just- I don’t know,” Trixie looks down and Katya can see the blush in her chest. “You’re neat.”

Katya smiles at her and takes a step backwards.

“I think you’re neat too, Trixie. Come to the kitchen when you’re dressed.”

Katya leaves her to change in private and she practically skips to the stove, where she throws on eggs and bacon and starts her coffee maker.

Trixie emerges a few minutes later, looking a little sleepy still, and the robe hangs off her hands but it fits her perfectly everywhere else, and Katya can barely peel her eyes off her curves, her red toenails, to turn over the bacon before it burns.

Trixie pours them coffee out and sits at the kitchen table, watching Katya cook. She’s deliberate with her moves, Trixie’s eyes feel like velvet on her skin, and she wants to make it perfect but she somehow ends up burning the toast and the eggs are a little runny.

But Trixie doesn’t seem to mind, she’s got a mouthful of food and she’s laughing at some stupid joke that fell out of Katya’s mouth before she could stop herself. She slaps Katya’s hand on the table and holds onto it, eats with one hand and Katya will happily do the same, she doesn’t care how awkward it is or how she can’t smoke and eat at the same time, she can smoke later. And she realizes she hasn’t smoked since before she met Trixie last night, and her fingers are itching so bad under Trixie’s soft hand. Her teeth itch too, she needs a cigarette in her mouth, but she drinks her coffee instead.

Breakfast ends and she tugs Trixie outside onto her back porch, sits her in her lap and smokes three cigarettes in a row, leans in to breathe in the smell of Trixie’s hair once in a while. It’s starting to smell like her cigarettes, too, and the combination makes her ache in the best way. 

Trixie’s perched happily, sitting up straight and looking out on her farm, her hands between her knees.

“You really like it out here?” Trixie asks lightly, and Katya exhales, thinks hard.

“I think so, yeah.”

Trixie turns to look at her, her eyes dart to her lips around her cigarette and she purses her own for a moment before looking back up into her eyes.

“You think?”

“Well, it’s really all I’ve ever known,” Katya shrugs and chews on her lip. “I mean, I grew up in town, but I always stayed with my grandparents out on this farm. I only ever went to school and learned how to break horses. I guess if I thought about it, I’d say it’d be nice to maybe try something else…”

She trails off, lost in her thoughts, and her eyes focus back in when she feels Trixie tuck her half-undone braid over her shoulder. She shrugs again.

“I think I’d like it out here,” Trixie says softly. It goes to Katya’s stomach and she hopes Trixie doesn’t see her blush.

“It’s nice,” She nods, and Trixie giggles a little.

“Can you imagine me? Out here? What would I do?”

“You’d be a good mama.”

Trixie tuts.

“I want a career, Katya. I wanna be a working woman.”

“Hey, mamas work plenty hard!”

“No, I want to get my hands dirty.”

Trixie’s looking down at Katya imploringly, begging her to understand.

“What you have right now isn’t the life you want,” Katya stubs out her cigarette and reaches for another, it’s the last one in her pack. She’ll get more when she drops Trixie off in town later. When she realizes she’ll have to actually drop her off, her heart sinks a little bit.

“Exactly,” Trixie says earnestly. “I don’t want to just be someone’s wife; I want to have a career. I want to make my own money and- just _live_. For myself. Our grandmas and great-grandmas didn’t fight for our independence for us to just throw it away. It’s nineteen sixty-nine.”

Katya’s eyebrows lift and she smiles at her as she lights her cigarette. She takes in a deep puff and speaks as she breathes it out.  
“And educated woman!”

Trixie smiles proudly.

“I might be beautiful, but I’m also smart.”

“Well, Trixie, I hope you get what you want out of life.”

“I hope you do, too.”

Katya looks up at Trixie and knows that she will.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There’s a certain way Trixie looks at Katya that makes every atom in her body vibrate. It’s as if Trixie’s seeing her for the first time, as if she’s never noticed Katya’s uneven part in her loose, waist-length hair, or her ever-present crow’s feet. Trixie will stare at her for entirely too long to be considered polite, mapping out the planes of her face, and it makes Katya blush, but she loves it. She doesn’t think anyone’s ever looked at her that way before.

Katya can’t remember another time where she felt as much love for someone as she had with her ex-girlfriend.

Violet had been a tornado of sex, romance, and jealousy. She is a perfect storm; she knows how to scorn her lovers into submission and send them far enough away so they can’t feel her anymore, but close enough for her long, thin fingers to wrap around their wrists and pull them back in. Violet can make her lovers believe anything she says and Katya had fallen for it hook, line, and sinker.

But being raised halfway on a farm, with only her cousins and brothers to make believe with and her grandpa to teach her about horses, was no proper way to learn about people like Violet. Katya had only believed villains like her existed in world wars or fairytales before she’d been smacked in the face with her malevolence. She hadn’t known when Violet’s mouth turned up into a sweet smile that it would be the worst vision she’d ever see.

It was a relationship that had lasted longer than it should have, and Katya knows this. Every time Violet pops into her head, she thinks about how she wasted so much time with a woman who lives for herself alone. But she couldn’t escape her dark looks, the way her mouth had fit so perfectly with hers, how she could bend Katya into positions she never knew were possible. Violet is a kind of force Katya had never encountered before, and she had been so in love with her.

But Violet’s love for Katya hadn’t been real, even though it had _felt_ real. It had been all-encompassing, static, feverish. When it had ended, after Katya caught Violet with some college girl in the bathroom of Busted Saddles, she was hollow. She was a melted candle with a wick an inch too short to light again. No one, before or since Violet, had been able to make Katya feel so much.

She wanted to feel the hurt that comes after a bad break up. She basked in it, let herself steep in it until she was soggy and dingy, until even Pearl couldn’t take her moping anymore. There wasn’t anything anyone could have done to shake Katya from her sadness. It was something she needed to experience, a bandage that needed to be pulled off slowly, adhesive plucking out one hair at a time.

And then Trixie sat down next to her at the bar and the bandage was gone.

 

 

 

               

On Friday evenings, the local drive-in is where most of the city’s inhabitants can be found.

Big Rock Drive-In is loud, crowded, overflowing with food, and Katya loves it. It reminds her of when her grandpa would drive them down after a long day working with his horses. He would buy her a box of popcorn, and when she’d finish it before the previews even came on, they’d split a paper sack of the best burgers she’d ever had and a big Coca Cola. Those nights, swatting away mosquitos and flies in the bed of Grandpa’s truck and getting to go to bed extra late, were some of the best times of Katya’s life.

She comes back now regularly, even if she can’t stand the films being shown, if only to relive those moments with the one man who had ever truly loved her for who she is. She brings Pearl, and now she brings Jinkx, too, who’s proving to be a pretty good friend to Katya. She’s glad, since it looks like Pearl might finally be settling down.

At Big Rock Drive-In, Jinkx rolls out of the truck bed to pick up ice cream for the three of them, promising in her raspy voice that she’ll “wrestle it out of someone’s hands if I have to.”

It’s uncharacteristically hot this evening. It hasn’t rained in two weeks and the wind is low, so low it’s almost nonexistent. Katya knows the drive-in won’t have any ice cream left, or else their machine will break down or Jinkx will drop it on the way back- it’s been that kind of week for her, full of misfortune and droll interactions and heat, so much heat.

She’s mopping up the sweat on her forehead with her bandana when Pearl starts talking about how much her sales have improved at the farmers’ market since she and Jinkx met. Katya’s heard this fact about ten times in the last four days, but she lets Pearl talk and enjoys the look of awe that graces her face every time she talks about it.

“She’s getting all her friends and their rich families to come pick up my produce and I’ve never made so much money,” Pearl’s leaned in and is speaking in low tones. “She’s just…done it! Didn’t even ask me if I needed help getting the word out. I’ve been selling for years now and never made this much.”

Katya knows Jinkx has been staying at Pearl’s for the last week because every time she drives by her and Pearl’s shared tree line, she can hear Jinkx laughing, or see her bright red hair flashing in the backyard. Once, Pearl waved from her bathroom window, sticking her head and arm out and cackling, making rude gestures Katya’s way with her fingers and mouth. Katya had expected Jinkx to do something for Pearl, if only for the fact that lesbians always invest early, but she hadn’t expected her to increase Pearl’s business.

“So she really likes you then,” Katya says as she tucks her bandana over the partially undone buttons on her flannel. It’s so hot she’s about to have to strip down into her sleeveless shirt.

Pearl hums.

“I think so! I hope so. I really like her. She gets me like no one else ever has.”

“Well, to be fair, the only thing you were ever concerned about anyone getting with you was sex.”

Pearl laughs and blindly reaches over to slap Katya’s knee. She lands on her thigh instead and Katya yelps, swats her back quick before scooting away to the other side of the bed.

“She’s going to college for ecology,” Pearl says with some sort of tone Katya can’t place. “She’s gonna study the environment. I didn’t even know that was a thing.”

“She sounds like a good person for you,” Katya shrugs. “I like her. She’s funny and easy to talk to. She seems to know everyone’s business, too, I don’t know how you guys do that.”

Pearl shrugs and grins shyly.

“She’s just a good woman.”

Katya cackles at Pearl. She’s so into Jinkx she can’t keep herself from waxing poetic and Katya’s rarely seen her this way, in some romantic mood, couth and sweet.

When Pearl talks about her, she sweeps her hair over one shoulder and runs her fingers through it, and Katya wonders if that’s what Jinkx does at night before they go to sleep. It inevitably brings Trixie to mind, how Katya had buried her nose in her long hair while watching the sun rise with her. It had been such a simple moment in time, but it had set something alight in Katya.

There’s something in the pit of Katya’s stomach that feels like jealousy, and it mingles with the ever-present fact that she’s been too scared to ask Trixie out on a date. It’s not that she thinks Trixie will say no- she knows she’ll say yes- it’s that she doesn’t know what to do with the feelings that bubble up when she sees her. Katya swears her heart’s going to explode one of these days, when Trixie is sitting beside her with her soft skin and vibrant attitude. And if she’s honest with herself, she wants what Pearl has with Jinkx, and the slowly creeping thought that she might be incredibly close to it drives her crazy and renders her unable to act.

Pearl’s still talking about Jinkx when Katya blinks back into reality, and she sees her crossing and uncrossing her thin legs, picking at the cotton of her khaki shorts.

“Her parents don’t come home for another week; she’s gonna stay with me until then.”

Katya whistles and stares out ahead of her, leaned back on her forearms. The kids are getting restless, as they always do when the sun’s about to set and the films are almost ready to begin. They’re throwing sticks at each other, a couple are in a corner, knee-deep in a crudely dug hole, probably antagonizing earth worms and ants. One kid is sitting dead center of the wild mass, firmly zoning out and picking their nose. Katya wrinkles hers as she watches the kid observe their findings and then consume them.

“Speak of the devil, _and_ her bosom buddy!”

Katya turns her head at Pearl’s voice and does a double take.

Jinkx is walking back to the truck, one hand holding two ice cream cones, the other wrapped up in Trixie’s, tugging her along with her.

Katya sits up to get a better look at her. She looks excited, she’s got a little smile on her face and her eyes are boring into Katya’s, fiery and intent. She’s clutching an ice cream cone in the hand that’s not entwined with Jinkx’s and it’s threatening to drip down her knuckles and Katya wants to lick it up.

“Look who I found!”

Jinkx is grinning wildly, her big white teeth shining in the sunset as they arrive at Katya’s truck. “Miss Mattel let me cut in line with her and we got the last of the ice cream.”

Jinkx hands Katya one of the cones and Pearl the other then hops up onto the bed, telling Pearl about some group of girls she saw in line and Katya has no idea why their skinny dipping was so scandalous, but she hears Pearl gasp and Jinkx cackle. She can’t turn her head to inquire because her eyes are locked on Trixie’s throat, where a gold necklace with a horseshoe and a little diamond rest in the dip of her collar bones.

Trixie leans against the side of the bed, her ribs are pressed against it and she’s got one arm folded over the edge. She’s smiling big now, biting her lower lip.

“Hi.”

“Hey,” Katya says breathlessly. Trixie’s brow quirked when she greeted her and Katya’s whole body jumped up, she’s got an arm propped up beside Trixie’s and they’re so close to each other already it’s impossible not to notice.

Katya can hear Jinkx shuffling in her big dress behind her, trying to get comfortable and yelling at Pearl about devouring the ice cream already, but Katya isn’t paying any more attention than that, because Trixie’s hair is reflecting the orange of the evening and her eyes are sparkling, holding her gaze so seriously. Katya can’t feel her fingers; she needs a cigarette.

“Be careful,” Katya manages to tear her eyes away from Trixie’s glowing face to watch her ice cream threaten to drip onto the white linen of her peasant top.

“Hmm?”

Trixie looks down and gasps, quickly brings her hand to her mouth and twists her wrist to lick up the drip. She leaves her plush lips on the last knuckle, sucks a little around a smile. Trixie’s dimples are driving Katya crazier than she thought flesh ever could.

“Thank you,” She says softly. She licks her lips and positions her weight on her arm. Katya can see her loafered foot kicking back and forth in the gravel, swinging as she balances on the other.

“You’re welcome. Where are you sitting?”

Katya makes quick work of the melting parts of her own cone as Trixie motions behind herself with her head.

“Two cars down, the one with the annoying girls?”

Trixie looks amused but Katya can hear something in her voice that suggests she’s over them already, that the movies will be a relief.

Katya looks around her big wavy hair to the two women sitting on a blanketed hood of a Cadillac, laughing loudly and spilling popcorn everywhere. Their hair is big like Trixie’s, but hers towers over theirs, is shinier and wavier, and Katya’s immediately uninterested in them.

“Can’t take ‘em anywhere,” Trixie sighs. “They always get us kicked out, their big mouths.”

“You can sit with us,” Katya says lightly, shoves her cone in her mouth again to keep from saying anything more incriminating.

Trixie tilts her head to the side and eyes Katya.

“You never called after the weekend,” She says simply.

Katya blinks, laughs a little.

She can remember the one phone call between them perfectly. She’d played back the shy huffs of laughter and soft questions asked over the crackling phone line over and over again, memorized Trixie’s “I don’t know”s and “You’re hilarious”es, how she’d said Katya’s name a little wrong but with such feeling that Katya hadn’t felt like correcting her.

“Well neither did you. And I’m not the one with Mommy and Daddy listening in when I get calls.”

Trixie smirks and rolls her eyes, and Katya’s stomach jumps again.

“Very funny. Not an excuse.”

Trixie leans in even more and her lips are so close, Katya wants to kiss her but there’s no possible way. She’d rather shoot herself in the foot. But Trixie is close, in public, Katya can see the mascara on her lashes and smell her shampoo, and it reminds her of waking up buried in it, smoking with Trixie in her lap.

The sun is under the horizon now and the drive-in’s projector is flickering to life. Children scream in delight as they run back to their parents, and their connection is broken a little as their attention turns to the screen, then back at each other.

Trixie licks a long, slow line up the side of her cone before swallowing it slowly. Her lips glisten as she speaks.

“Call me tonight. Okay?”

Katya nods and Trixie gives her a tiny, tiny air kiss before twirling around in her pencil skirt and shuffling back to the Cadillac.

Katya watches her screech in laughter with her friends and hop onto the hood in a practiced movement, cone held out far as she does it. She sidles up next to her brunette friend and slaps her knee playfully.

And through the entirety of “Easy Rider” and “Goodbye, Columbus,” Katya glances to her left to gauge Trixie’s reactions, how hard she’s laughing, if she’s falling for the lamest love story Katya’s ever seen. She squints in the night air to see her face illuminated by the projector, silver and blue and in awe.

Katya chews on the cone when her ice cream is finished, biting off little parts and crushing them between her front teeth, watching when Trixie flails her arms in delight and leans in to whisper something in her friend’s ear. Her loafers knock back and forth against each other.

She’s still mopping up her sweat with her bandana but it smells different now, it’s not musty from the heat anymore.

By the time everyone is packing up and the drive-in is playing its ‘goodbye’ credits, Katya’s seen more of Trixie Mattel than Dennis Hopper.

She nudges Jinkx and Pearl awake and they pile into the cab sleepily, Jinkx on Pearl’s lap, her hand holding Katya’s hat in the middle seat.

Katya pulls out of the parking lot slowly, gravel popping beneath the tires. Everyone looks sleepy or in love or a little bit of both, couples are cranking their engines and untangling themselves from one another. The children are all fast asleep, snoring in the back windows of cars or in the popped open trunks.

When she passes Trixie still perched on the Cadillac, she looks over to her, and Trixie smiles big, waves and holds her hand to her ear like a phone.

 

 

               

 

It’s a twenty-minute drive home through the entirety of Big Rock and around the curve that still echoes Trixie’s laughter. Pearl is asleep with her head resting against the window and Jinkx is bouncing in her lap from the dips in the road, hands splayed across the dashboard. She and Katya have been silent for most of the drive, sitting in their tiredness.

“You know,” Jinkx says thoughtfully, “Everyone’s stopped talking about you, for the most part.”

Katya nearly drives off the road with Jinkx’s sudden revelation.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, everyone knows you like women. That’s not a secret- you knew that, right?”

Katya rolls her eyes and shifts gears, sending Jinkx’s skirts flouncing around her as she pulls into Pearl’s driveway. She can’t deny how charming her voice is, though, how it makes everything she says just the slightest bit easier to stomach.

“Yeah, I knew that.”

“It used to be a big thing in town. I mean, no one really _talks_ about that, you know? It’s not…safe. But you’ve always been obvious about it.”

Katya shrugs and parks her truck.

“It’s good though,” Jinkx says quickly. “I wish I could be that way.”

“You don’t.” Katya says. “Trust me. I can barely do anything in this town.”

“Well, everyone’s talking about Violet now, so at least you have a break from it.”

Katya’s skin prickles at the name and she fights the urge to scream as Jinkx continues.

“She got caught in Misses Malone’s bed the other day by her husband, she’s not going to live that down for a whiiiile!”

Jinkx laughs but Katya can’t bring herself to breathe deep enough to join her.

 

 

 

 

 

Katya’s sitting at her kitchen table, lit cigarette between two fingers as she waits for her phone call to be picked up.

It’s almost midnight and she’s actually finding herself worried that she’ll be chastised by Trixie’s parents for calling so late. Every ring makes her bare foot tap on the floor, her fingers ash her cigarette.

She’d had to force herself to head straight for the phone when she’d gotten home, allowing herself the luxury of taking off her blue jeans and boots after putting on a pot of coffee, popping the buttons on her flannel quickly. It’s almost too hot for just her tank top and underwear.

“Hello?”

Katya’s thoughts jump back to the present and she doesn’t remember the ringing ever stopping, but that’s Trixie’s voice on the other line, soft like it was the first time they spoke over the phone.

“Hi, Trixie?”

“Yes,” she giggles.

“It’s Katya.”

“I know,” her laughter continues and Katya takes a deep drag of her cigarette, scoots her butt deeper into the chair and pulls a leg to her chest.

“I thought maybe you’d set me up for failure. You didn’t pick up for forever.”

“I was in the bath,” Trixie says easily, and Katya’s eyes shut involuntarily. “Still am, just had to run to my room and grab my phone. Sorry it took so long!”

She doesn’t sound sorry at all, and when Katya stutters out reassurance that it’s perfectly fine, Trixie giggles again. Katya can her splashing on the other end of the line. She wonders if Trixie’s bathtub is pink.

“So tell me,” Trixie says. “Tell me what you’ve been up to.”

“Oh me? Not much of anything,” Katya sighs. She ashes her cigarette before taking a quick hit, blows it away from the receiver. “Other than work, of course. Setting everything up for another horse, she’s coming in Monday. Apparently, she has major attitude issues.”

“Hm, you gonna set her straight?” She sounds amused. “What if she won’t listen?”

“Oh, she’ll listen. They always do.”

Trixie grunts out a laugh and then the line goes silent, crackles a little with the energy.

“What about you?”

“Just wearing my parents out, pushing them about college and refusing to go on dates with men, the usual.”

“They don’t retaliate?”

“They can’t,” Trixie says, and it sounds like she’s grinning. “I’m the baby.”

“And you really aren’t interested in that kind of life?”

Katya sits up in her chair now, phone resting between her ear and shoulder as she pulls another cigarette from the pack. She hears Trixie make a guttural, disgusted sound as she lights it.

“It’s so boring. And limiting. I told you, I want to do something with my life, something…more than this.”

There’s another splash in the background and Katya can imagine Trixie gesturing with a small, pruny hand before plopping it back into the bath water.

“They don’t want me to go to college. I’m trying, though.”

“Well, I’m proud of you for not giving up.”

“I never give up.”

Katya smiles around the filter.

“I know.”

Midnight turns into two o’clock, and Katya’s sprawled out on her couch, one leg hiked up over the back of it, her extra-long phone cord dragging the floor. Trixie’s talking about her sister, how she’s only four years older than her but has three kids already, a big house and a husband in the military. She sounds repulsed by it, and Katya slips into her fleeting moods, fits against the curves of her words, until it’s nearly three in the morning and they’re both mumbling, Trixie moved to her bed long ago.

“’T’s late,” Trixie whispers.

“Yeah.”

“I need to go to sleep.”

“Me too.”

“I wish I could sleep beside you again,” Trixie yawns. “I liked that.”

Katya smiles sleepily at her words and her heart speeds up.

“I liked it too.”

“Call me tomorrow?”

“Of course.”

Every night, after the sun’s been set for an hour or two, Katya calls Trixie and makes a pot of coffee. She’ll clean her dishes, mop the floor, eat a slice of cheesecake Jinkx brought over, and smoke too many cigarettes as she listens to Trixie talk about everything under the sun, and it feels like a rosebud blooming in her chest.

 

               

 

Friday evening Trixie shows up at Katya’s front door unannounced with a towel-covered key lime pie and a pack of cigarettes. She looks good, she’s got half of her hair pulled up and pinned to the back of her head, and it all tumbles down her shoulders in loose waves. Her full bangs are parted a little down the middle from her bike ride through town, and she swipes at them as they tickle her brow a little.

She’s not wearing a dress or a skirt this time. Instead, she’s got on form-fitting pedal pushers with the cuffs rolled up over her smooth ankles, the busy plaid pattern matching the cloth in her hand.

“You biked here?” Katya’s eyebrows are practically buried in her hairline as she looks at Trixie’s Huffy with the wicker basket propped against the railing on her front porch.

“Yeah,” Trixie shrugs. Her free hand is propped on her hip and she looks bored of the conversation.

“Jesus Christ, that’s like…ten miles at least.”

“Fifteen, from my house,” Trixie clarifies, and Katya looks at her even more surprised. “What? Daddy might not let me drive a car but I still know how to read a map.”

Katya shakes her head and stares hard at Trixie’s face, the little beads of sweat dotting her forehead and upper lip, makeup somehow still in place. Her shirt is black, and Katya can’t see anything but the perspiration on her chest above the scoop neck, and she bets she’s sweaty underneath all that dark clothing.

All of it, how her bottoms hit her waist just right, the sleek black belt with the shining gold buckle, the black patent loafers and black bow in her hair, it makes Katya blink rapidly for a moment, much to Trixie’s smirking delight, and Katya beckons her inside, holding the door wide open for her.

Katya still has her sweaty work clothes on, a pair of overalls caked with mud and hay, so she lets Trixie in and hollers to her through the house as she changes.

“I wasn’t expecting you!” She says as she strips from her clothing. She sighs with the cool air hitting her skin, stands with limp arms for a moment as she soaks it all up.

She can hear Trixie laughing over the sound of glass hitting a countertop and plates being pulled from a cabinet.

“Well, I wasn’t up to anything and I wanted to come see your pretty face.”

Katya blushes as she walks over to her dresser. She picks out her favorite top, the one with the burgundy and orange horizontal stripes and three-quarter length sleeves, and wills herself to not look up into the mirror. She doesn’t want to see how flushed she is from Trixie’s cute voice.

“Oh,” She pulls it over her head, struggles to fit her frizzy, undone hair and head through the small opening. She grunts a little and digs her socked feet into the hardwood, hoping for a little leeway. “Well I’m glad you did.”

“Me too.”

Trixie’s voice is much closer and quieter and Katya yelps in shock as her head pops through the hole. She sees Trixie leaning against the doorway, laughing with her arms crossed, and her eyes are dragging up her body slowly. Suddenly Katya’s very aware of the tiny pair of underwear she’s got on, how little she’s clothed and just how clothed Trixie is in comparison.

Trixie finally reaches her eyes and she smiles sweetly as Katya regains her composure. She sweeps her hands under her hair and pulls it out to rest on her shoulders before padding over to her closet to pull out a good pair of denim.

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” Trixie grins.

“You got tired of waiting?” Katya quirks an eyebrow and pops a hip out as she browses her few options. She knows exactly what she wants to wear, but looking into Trixie’s eyes, in her bedroom, half dressed, would lead to Trixie being half dressed too, and it’s too early for that. She thinks. “Unbelievable.”

Trixie cackles and turns to walk back down the hallway. Her ass sways, big and tempting, and Katya watches it like a hawk and groans inwardly.

“Come eat before the pie gets warm!”

Katya’s mouth hangs open a little and she stares blankly into the closet at Trixie’s words. She takes the first pair of jeans her fingers touch and slips them on. She wants to eat Trixie as Trixie eats pie; she wants her knees to hurt on the knotted wooden floor beneath her.

But she won’t do it. Trixie came over unannounced, and she never does anything unplanned. Katya wants to know why she’s here- she’s sure it isn’t to get eaten out, at least not yet.

Katya walks slowly to her kitchen, counting her steps to stop thinking about that mind-melting image.

She finds Trixie sitting down at the table, reading the morning’s newspaper and eating already, fully ignoring Katya walking into the room.

It’s almost too domestic, how Trixie looks like she’s been sitting in that spot for years, how her fingers curl around Katya’s fork, her disinterest in her. It makes her stomach churn, and she wants to do something to disrupt it, turn the table over and run away, or stand in the middle of the kitchen and scream, slam her cast-iron skillet against the Formica countertop.

But she sits down across from her instead, and the first bite of pie melts onto her tongue and she sinks into her chair. At this point, she wouldn’t care if Trixie was blindly scolding their child with a wandering hand as she balanced their checkbook, not if she could come home to key lime pie that tasted like heaven.

“This…” Katya says, and Trixie looks up at her distractedly. “Is the best…pie I’ve _ever_ had.”

Trixie grins and folds the paper briskly.

“I’m glad you like it! It’s my favorite thing to make in the summer.”

“I don’t-“ Katya points into the air with her fork. “It’s so _limey_.”

Trixie laughs outright.

“Eat some more; I think you’ve been out in the sun too much today.”

Katya doesn’t need to be told twice. As she eats, she realizes it’s been hours since she had a proper meal, and suddenly she’s ravenous. Trixie cuts her another slice and Katya is halfway through it when she snaps her fingers and startles Trixie out of their shared silence.

“Brigitte Bardot!” She says with a mouthful of pie.

Trixie gives her a look and laughs. Her nose is a little flushed, and her cheeks are probably red, too, underneath all that makeup.

“What?”

“Your hair,” Katya swallows hard. She took too big of a bite in her hunger and now she’s beginning to regret it, the sour fruit twisting in her stomach a little. “It’s like Brigitte Bardot, but bigger.”

Trixie smiles a little and looks down at her plate. She pushes around a stray piece of meringue with her fork.

“Thank you. I- like her a lot.”

“Me too.”

Their eyes meet in a smile and Trixie breaks the contact first to look back down at her plate. She’s never been so shy before, and it makes Katya’s belly warm.

“So, Miss Mattel,” Katya says. “What brought you over here on a Friday night?”

“I’ve got a private booth reserved at Perot’s and Daddy’s checkbook.”

Katya’s fork clatters onto the plate and she gapes at Trixie, who’s grinning and nodding her head.

“You heard me.”

“ _Perot’s_? The second-fanciest restaurant around?” Katya’s eyes bug.

Trixie checks her nails and buffs them against her chest quickly.

“Yep.”

“Uh, _okay_!”

Katya’s chair is pushed back and she’s out of the room before Trixie can look up at her. She hears Katya’s “I don’t know what to wear!” and the shuffling of dresser drawers, and Trixie shakes her head. She clears off their plates and puts the pie in the fridge before she joins Katya, who’s standing in the middle of her bedroom with two near-identical black blouses held out in front of her.

 

 

 

Perot’s is quiet and dim, and Katya’s only ever seen it from the outside, but it looks just like what she had imagined. It’s strangely gaudy for Big Rock, like all the taxes paid went towards furnishing the mayor’s favorite restaurant in gold leaf and Deco dining room pieces.

Trixie sweeps into the restaurant with the poise of someone who learned to walk under the white-clothed tables, and she pulls Katya down the walkway by her sleeve, following the host as he takes them to their seat.

They pass people Katya’s only ever seen in passing, their clothing high-end and pressed, but Trixie knows them all by name, and the host slows his pace so she can greet a few.

Katya scans the rooms haphazardly, taking in their inhabitants with a careless eye, until she sees shining black hair underneath a red pillbox hat, and she gasps.

Violet looks up from her menu as if she could smell Katya’s scent in the room, and her eyes land directly onto hers. Katya freezes and she can’t tear her gaze away. She can hear the alarm bells going off in her head, and she knows she needs to leave Violet’s line of sight immediately, but she can’t bring herself to do it.

Trixie stops in her tracks, pulled back by Katya’s sturdy frame standing still, and she smooths her sleeve down and looks up at her imploringly.

Katya isn’t paying any attention to what she’s saying to her, and it’s not because she doesn’t want to, but because she’s watching Violet’s eyes dart from Katya’s face to where Trixie’s hand is slipping down to Katya’s wrist, then to Trixie’s face looking up at her sweetly, her pink smile. Katya can see Violet’s eyes harden with rage, and she cuts back to Katya and glares.

Katya shivers as she’s pulled down the walkway again, to a deep, semi-circular booth in the corner of the room, away from prying and angry eyes.

Trixie thanks the host and slips him a couple of bills before sliding into the burgundy booth. Katya’s hot on her trail, and she sits with her back to the room as Trixie revolves to the opposite side.

There’s a certain way Trixie looks at Katya that makes every atom in her body vibrate. It’s as if Trixie’s seeing her for the first time, as if she’s never noticed Katya’s uneven part in her loose, waist-length hair, or her ever-present crow’s feet. Trixie will stare at her for entirely too long to be considered polite, mapping out the planes of her face, and it makes Katya blush, but she loves it. She doesn’t think anyone’s ever looked at her that way before.

Trixie hasn’t looked down at her menu since she opened it. It rests in her hands, propped up, and it shields the lower half of her face. They’re both the same height sitting down, Katya’s length being all in her legs, and she likes it. It feels good to be even. Trixie’s eyes are crinkled and Katya knows she’s smiling.

“What?” Katya finally breaks the silence after glancing up from her menu for the fifth time to find Trixie still staring at her.

Trixie shrugs and makes a noncommittal hum before her eyes finally snap back to her menu.

“You’re gorgeous,” Trixie says.

Katya smiles a little and goes back to deciphering the language before her. She wants to read her options, and she fully plans on ordering the most expensive thing she thinks she’ll like as a ‘fuck you’ to Trixie’s unsupportive father, but all she can think about is Violet’s glare superimposed over Trixie’s sweet face. “You’re gorgeous” echoes in her brain, bounces around and stutters over itself.

She doesn’t want to think about her, but Violet is a Kudzu vine that wraps around every edible piece of nature it finds. Katya tries to cut it back, pull its roots from her skin, but her eyes are there in the back of her head anyway, keeping her on edge.

“If you’re lost, I can help?”

Katya looks up at Violet, blinks and sees Trixie biting her lip and placing her menu on the table. She slides around the booth and practically sits on top of Katya. She can smell her perfume and the bubblegum Trixie had spit out before they entered Perot’s.

“I think you’d like one of these,” She speaks in a low, sweet tone. It’s meant only for Katya, and she feels a little ashamed that she let Violet get to her the way she did when Trixie’s right here, taking better care of her already than Violet ever had.

Her short, pink nail runs over a few options and Katya stares at them. She’s saying the words in her head but she can’t make sense of them because Trixie’s other hand is on her thigh, inching inward and upward slowly, hidden by the tablecloth.

“This one is very good,” She leans in close and whispers into Katya’s hair. Katya takes in a short, shuddering breath and Trixie giggles at it and digs her fingers into her thigh a little. “Do you want me to order for you?”

Trixie pulls back a little to look at Katya, whose eyes are glued to the menu. She nods and Trixie smirks and slips the menu from her hands.

When their waiter comes, Katya doesn’t understand half of the words Trixie’s saying, but she hears “City Strip” and “Classic Style Oscar” and wants to melt a little at the way Trixie commands the situation so effortlessly. She’s truly in her element, beneath the crystal chandelier and between the dark oak walls.

She stays beside Katya the whole time, her hand between her legs, and her thumb moves up and brushes against Katya when she excitedly orders the wine and Katya jumps and immediately wishes she could sink into the soft leather beneath her.

“She’s thrilled,” Trixie covers for her with glimmering eyes, and the waiter nods. “It’s her birthday.”

“Oh! Well happy birthday, Miss. We’ll have our chef whip up something special for you.”

Trixie’s grinning and Katya wants to tell him it’s not necessary, but she can only stutter as Trixie grips her thigh tighter.

“Oh, that would be wonderful,” Trixie gushes. “She’s allergic to nuts.”

“Duly noted. I’ll have your wine out momentarily.”

The waiter bows, his black suit crinkling at the waist, before shuffling to the kitchen.

Katya looks over at Trixie, and she’s staring at her with an enormous grin.

“I’m not allergic to nuts.”

Trixie shrugs.

“I don’t like them.”

Dinner is spent with Trixie across the table from her again, her leg propped up on the booth and toes tucked under Katya’s knee. After two glasses of wine the atmosphere is fuzzier and Katya relaxes, lets her fingers trail around Trixie’s ankle and the top of her foot. From the waist up, they appear to be good friends, laughing over a meal of juicy steak and asparagus, but beneath the cloth Katya is heated and wet and tapping her black suede Oxfords against the tiled floor impatiently.

Trixie takes her time eating, she cuts her steak slowly and deliberately, chews thoughtfully and only sips at her wine. Katya looks up when half of her steak is gone and slows down to match her pace, much to Trixie’s entertainment.

On the drive back home Katya grips the steering wheel tight, caught in a loop of doubt. Trixie sits beside her and she fiddles with the radio dial until she hits Sly & The Family Stone, sings along to it, shimmies her body to the beat and laughs at herself. She looks so breezy, careless and a little drunk, sure, but lighthearted, and Katya can’t shake the feeling that Trixie is too good for her.

When the song’s over, Trixie leans over and kisses Katya on the cheek. They’re in the middle of downtown, at a red light, and Katya pulls back a little as Trixie’s lips leave her. Trixie pulls a face and looks at her.

“What was that?”

“We’re in public,” Katya mumbles as she cranks her window up quickly. “I don’t think you should be kissing me.”

“Hey.”

Katya turns her head and before she can comprehend it, Trixie grabs her face with both hands and kisses her, deep and heavy. The wine on her breath is intoxicating and it mingles with the shock in Katya’s stomach and makes her moan, just a little.

Trixie’s lips moving against hers feel like slipping into bed after a long day, and she relaxes into them. Her hand rests on the cotton of Trixie’s pedal pushers and she can feel her heat.

Trixie kisses her, long and hard, and when she pulls away she stares at Katya with serious eyes.

“I don’t care what they think,” Trixie says.  “Remember that.”

Katya blinks slow and nods slower.

The car behind them honks their horn and Katya looks up to see the light green and the car that was in front of them long gone. She speeds off and they stay silent until they reach the road leading to Katya’s house, the gravel spray and wind filling their ears.

“Trixie,” Katya sighs. “I’m- why do you like me?”

“What?” Trixie chuckles and looks over at Katya with raised brows.  “What?”

“What about me is appealing to you? I mean…I’m not like anyone back there.” Katya jerks her head back.

She won’t make eye contact with Trixie, she can’t, and when Trixie tugs on her elbow to bring her hand to her lap, Katya doesn’t look down at it resting between her thighs.

“I like you because you’re not like them,” Trixie says. “You’re- _you._ Unapologetically.”

“Trixie, I can’t even kiss you in public without freaking out,” Katya moves her hand to downshift and turns onto her long, gravel driveway. Her hair is starting to suffocate her; she’d only worn it out of her braids because Trixie asked, and she’s not used to the endless waves hitting her face in the wind from the passenger window.

Trixie doesn’t reply to her until Katya’s parked in front of the barn, and then it’s like the first night she took her home but inverted. It’s too bright outside, a seven o’clock summer evening, and the birds are chirping. Trixie isn’t on her knees, looking at her hopefully; she’s seated forwards still, turned only a little. And Katya’s nervous, but for a completely different reason.

“I know you probably won’t believe me,” Trixie begins as she pries one of Katya’s hands from the steering wheel. “But I really like how private you are.”

Katya looks up at her, finally, and Trixie doesn’t look annoyed or upset, or any way Katya had imagined this going. She looks sympathetic and maybe a little apologetic.

“Really?” She asks softly. Trixie nods.

“Yeah. You keep to yourself, and I admire that. My family isn’t like that- we tell everyone everything- and I’m just so used to being… _myself_ , in front of anyone, _everyone_ , that I don’t stop to think about what I’m actually showing the world.”

She brings Katya’s knuckles to her lips in a soft kiss.

“I’m sorry for kissing you Downtown. I shouldn’t do that; it’s not safe.”

“It isn’t,” Katya shakes her head and looks down at Trixie’s knees. “I don’t want anyone to hurt you-“

“No one would dream. Not with Daddy being a Commissioner.”

_Violet would. Violet probably is._

“Katya, I like you. You make me feel like a complete person, like you’re paying attention to what I have to say. I don’t get that a lot in town,” Trixie shrugs. Her nose crinkles. “Mostly I just get told I’m pretty and then have a slew of boys thrown in my direction. No one talks to me like you do.”

“Well they’re missing out, because you’re the smartest person I’ve ever met.”

Katya looks up at Trixie fully with cheeks dusted red, and Trixie smiles a little and bites her lip.

“Thanks, Katya,” She breathes.

She doesn’t know how it happened, but they’re suddenly millimeters away from each other, and Trixie’s bubblegum is back. She can see it resting between her teeth with her lips parted, and she wants to kiss her so hard she finds it between her own.

Trixie snaps her gum once and Katya kisses her faster than she’s ever kissed anyone.

She manages to make it inside with Trixie before she slams her against the door and stuffs three fingers inside of her, swallowing her moans as she pumps her fast. Trixie isn’t wearing any underwear, and that fact alone sends Katya close to the edge. Her lips are swollen and she’s huffing breaths against Katya’s cheek. Katya’s nose is buried in her hair and it smells so sweet, and again like her cigarettes, and between her moans and her wet kisses and thick hair Katya knows she isn’t going to last long at all.  When Trixie slips her hand down the front of her jeans and rubs her, Katya yelps, and they come together staggered moments later, blinds clattering behind Trixie as she shakes.

Trixie’s back in the pink robe, and she’s sitting at Katya’s table, sleeves rolled up as she fills out college applications she brought in her basket. Katya sits across from her in her own robe, smoking cigarette after cigarette, watching the smoke curl around Trixie’s fingers and chatting.

She wonders how long it’s going to last, the calm before the storm. She can feel the eye of the tornado inching closer, threatening to unravel everything holding her together. Katya wants to be happy, she wants to have Trixie and keep her safe, but she knows better.

It’s only a matter of time until the storm hits.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Katya has to admit, magic or no, Trixie curled up next to her on the couch eases her sense of doom. Trixie brings it down to a minimum with just her sweet face smiling up at her, as she hooks her leg over Katya’s knee and tucks herself under her chin. The winter nights don’t seem as cold and her future doesn’t look as grim.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :)

In the winter, Katya lets her muscles slacken. With the cool weather comes less business; farmers are unwilling to train their horses to work in the snow and ice when their crops only come around in the heat. Katya can take on an odd job or two, breaking a few horses for racing or Dressage. Even though the basics remain the same, Katya’s always happier when she’s working with show ponies, and these fewer jobs from the wealthier families around Big Rock float her through the cooler months. She spends most of her time reading and cutting firewood, or else going to the movie theater in town or wasting time at the bar.

Her own farm isn’t much of anything during the barren season, and so her main task, inherited from her grandpa, is cleaning out the barn, burning the old, moldy and moist hay and washing down the walls and concrete walkways on the days it’s above freezing.

Katya’s looking at her barn in the cold afternoon, brown wool coat wrapped around her as she stares up at the peeling red paint. She wonders how much money Pearl would demand to paint it again; last time she’d done it she’d discovered she was scared of heights, too, though Katya kind of wants to overlook that and beg her to do it again anyway.

But, regardless of fears, it needs to be done. Her barn is what her customers see first when they haul themselves miles and miles out of town to patronize her; she can’t leave a bad taste in their mouths any more than she already does.

She sighs and decides to bring up the barn when they’re drinking around a fire with the wood she just finished chopping.

She picks up the axe leaning against her shin and swings it into the tree stump at her side, pockmarked with decades of being used as an axe’s pin cushion. It lands smoothly in the wood and Katya feels that her arms and back are already sore from only an hour of chopping.

Katya doesn’t mind that she gets soft in the winter. She thinks of herself as a bear, staying in her warm cave and eating good food, reading off old recipes in her grandma’s faded handwriting and trying her hand at them. She sleeps and picks up piles of books from the library, most of the words too big for her incomplete high school education, but she keeps her dictionary handy.

Even though her profession is training horses, she’s only ever herself when she’s doing anything but. When she can bury her nose in a book and thumb through the bible-thin pages of _Webster’s_ , eating German chocolate cake and burning brush piles and getting drunk with Pearl- those are the moments of true happiness.

She hadn’t realized that until she was twenty-seven. Katya can remember that night better than almost anything else: lying in bed, staring up at the ceiling, with an unreadable, nasty feeling in the pit of her stomach.

And the endless sense of doom when she thought about her profession, her future- that couldn’t have been normal, and it brought on her stomach pains every single time.

When the possibility of her not being happy with her life finally hit Katya in the face, she sobbed the night through, until the sun brought snow showers and she fell asleep staring at the white noise.

She has a comfortable life, but if she’s honest with herself, she feels trapped.

Katya figures there’s not much she can do about it. She still feels the pain in her stomach at times, and the sense of doom is always on the horizon, but she’s learned to tamp those things down and focus on each day as its own entity. If she can overcome the demons of the summer, she can settle into the comforting evenings of the winter and live the way she wants.

Now it’s an even better gift because Trixie sits with her, knitting hats and mittens for the women’s shelter two towns over. She slips the hats on over Katya’s head to check the size, jams colorful mittens over her fists and grumbles when they’re too small.

“They can go to the kids,” She says resolutely, and casts off on three double-pointed needles.

Katya swears it’s witchcraft. She asked Pearl about it one evening when they were chatting around hot water and bourbon.

Pearl had smirked.

“Anything she does around you is witchcraft.”

Katya has to admit, magic or no, Trixie curled up next to her on the couch eases her sense of doom. Trixie brings it down to a minimum with just her sweet face smiling up at her, as she hooks her leg over Katya’s knee and tucks herself under her chin. The winter nights don’t seem as cold and her future doesn’t look as grim.

She tells Pearl and Jinkx about it one evening, and Jinkx tells her it’s “serendipitous, your meeting her,” and Katya nods and agrees with her, but only really agrees when she’s back at home flipping through _Webster’s_.

It _is_ serendipitous, and now that Katya knows what the word means she can tell Trixie. Her encounter with her at the bar was something Katya had never expected. Her luck has never been lost on her.

“Your face looks awful when you think hard,” Trixie says, looking up through her lashes at Katya’s scrunched expression.

Her voice and the clinking of her needles being dropped onto the coffee table brings Katya back from her mind, and she glances down at the top of her head and her fluttering lashes.

Katya blinks and then laughs a little, digs her fingers into Trixie’s side until she squeals and shimmies out of her grip to sit on the opposite side of the couch.

“Sometimes my beauty is just-“

“Oh, please!” Trixie cuts her off with barking laughter and Katya joins her, tongue between her teeth.

Trixie slots her cold feet underneath Katya’s ass and wiggles her toes. “What were you thinking about?”

Katya looks over and considers her for a moment. Trixie looks comfortable as she eases the soreness in her fingers from her knitting projects. She looks warm with her ruddy face even though she’s only wearing underwear and one of Katya’s sweaters she pulled from the depths of her dresser.

It’s from the wine she consumes nightly, the little lush, and Katya would be concerned for her if only she didn’t leave half-drunk bottles out in every room.

“How lucky I am.”

Trixie tucks her chin in a little and she smiles wider.

“I am! You make me very happy,” Katya circles her ankle with a hand and rubs against the little stubble there. “I think our meeting was serendipitous.”

Trixie looks at her curiously for a moment before falling content.

“So do I,” Trixie wiggles her toes again. “That’s a big word.”

“I had to look it up.”

“You’re so smart,” Trixie cocks her head to the side. “How’d my rugged cowgirl get so smart?”

Katya’s eyes bug out over a smile.

“Has anyone ever told you you’re rude?”

“All the time,” Trixie shrugs.

Katya laughs and turns to face Trixie, straddling her legs with her own. Trixie grips her feet with warm hands and presses her fingertips into her heels and it feels amazing after chopping wood all day. Katya closes her eyes and leans back on the arm of the couch.

“I didn’t finish high school,” Katya begins, and it’s Trixie’s eyes that bug out now. “I…things happened, when I was sixteen, and I got kicked out of my house and sent to live with Grandpa. So I didn’t get to finish my schooling, but he always made sure I was reading anyway.”

Katya can feel that her muscles have tightened but she doesn’t know when it happened. She isn’t sure she wants to continue but then Trixie is asking her “why” and she finds herself unable to stop.

“My parents were never good to me. The only girl- you’d think they’d love that- at least as a thing to sell off to a nice family and have some sort of connection, you know. Big Rock’s like that. But they never cared, because I couldn’t give them anything that my brothers lacked. And anyway, I never was one for dresses or girly things. I played outside with my brothers and I followed Grandpa around everywhere and it made Ma pretty upset. So it’s not like it would take much for them to ship me off, you know. And then one day…”

Katya covers her eyes and sinks into the couch, red with the memory. Trixie’s fingers move softly and deliberately against her skin. It doesn’t penetrate the tension but it gets close.

“God, it’s so embarrassing, looking back at it…they caught me with my friend in my room. We were supposed to be studying and I was dumb enough to leave the door wide open as I planted one on her…and I don’t know what happened to her, but I got sent to Grandpa’s with nothing but the clothes on my back.”

Katya hears Trixie gasp and she peeks through her fingers to see her jaw clenched and eyes hard.

Katya can still hear the vile things Ma called her as she kicked her out, and the way her brothers called after her, throwing fistfuls of her clothes and possessions her way as she headed down the road, begging her to take something with her. She’d made it halfway to the farm before Grandpa pulled over heading her direction and loaded her into the cab. He had said nothing as she cried into his dirty flannel on the side of the road on a hot May day, bits of straw poking her cheek.

“He always told me I was good, a good girl,” Katya says in low tones. Her voice is hoarse with the memory, and she can feel Trixie’s hands stilling on her feet. “He never hated me for who I am. I miss him. I miss him painting the damn barn.”

Silent as the snow falling outside, Trixie propels herself forward and crawls over the throw pillows and Katya’s bony knees to sit on her lap and cup her face gently. Trixie’s hair is big and eclipses everything in Katya’s view but her.

“Shut up about that stupid barn and make love to me,” she whispers. Her eyes are bright and reflecting the flames curling in the fireplace; she looks like an angel enticed.

Katya swallows hard.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Trixie leans in slowly to kiss her and her lips taste like cherries, the waxy chapstick rubbing off on Katya’s rough lips with every soft peck. She knows Trixie is going to take it slow; she can feel her plotting as she scoots up to press their chests together gently. Katya wants to feel her skin against her own, cold and shivering or hot and sweating. There’s too much fabric between them.

She fits her hands around Trixie’s waist and bunches up her sweatshirt between calloused fingertips. Trixie huffs a small sigh into her mouth and shimmies her torso so that Katya moves her hands to her hot middle.

Katya wants to holler, but she won’t. Instead, she’ll breathe into Trixie’s mouth how bad she wants her, tell her as her thighs squeeze Katya’s hips how good and thick she is.

The snow-silence outside mutes everything around them but the wood crackling in the brick fireplace. The heat from the flames makes Katya break out into a sweat coupled with Trixie’s soft mouth sliding down the side of her face to her jaw, a cleansing sweat that feels good coming out of her.

Katya isn’t religious, but there’s something holy in the way Trixie’s waist fits between her hands, in the way her lips part just barely when she moans, in the breath she exhales against Katya’s cheek. She can’t believe God exists, but the closest she knows she’ll get to seeing any semblance of her is sitting in her lap, in her clothes, tipsy on her bourbon.

It feels selfish to kiss Trixie with all Katya knows of life, but she does it anyway, with fervor. She bundles her up in her arms, winds her fingers in her long hair and wishes she could weave herself into it, exist in a plait cascading down her back. It would be warm and she would be able to feel Trixie’s heart beating, and she would never want for anything.

Neither of them went to Woodstock, but Katya heard about it secondhand from the ratty teen in the record shop two towns over; heard how everyone was naked, or else muddy and as good as naked, drinking, avoiding the brown acid. Katya heard about the hedonism, the carelessness of everyone there, the sheer ecstasy emanating from that farm. She can picture Trixie there perfectly, sitting far away from the crowd with her long hair everywhere, on a blanket safe from the dirt, like a statuette in a shrine.

It makes Katya smile, and Trixie smiles against her lips, too, licks her teeth and then into her mouth. She even tastes holy.

Their teeth click against each other and Trixie’s grip on Katya’s hair is tighter than it was before, and she’s pulling her head back to kiss her down her jaw to her neck.

Katya stares at the ceiling with slightly swimming eyes and hisses at Trixie’s hot mouth sucking against her skin. Her other hand is tugging at the neck of Katya’s sweater, exposing sensitive skin to the cooler air before it’s met with Trixie’s lips and tongue. It feels like hot, wet silk against her skin, and she can feel it down to her toes.

Somewhere during the evening Katya’s hair was freed from its braids, and it hangs in a heavy sheet down the side of the couch, almost touching the floor. She wants Trixie to wrap her hand around it and tug like she’s done so many times before, boss her around and tell her what to do. But Trixie’s being gentle tonight, and it’s making Katya lose her mind so that she couldn’t tell her what she wanted her to do even if she tried.

Trixie sits up suddenly, breaking the amber spell around them, and Katya blinks as she sits up a little. She watches Trixie shove her underwear down her thighs, carefully balance herself on one knee, then the other, before tossing the fabric behind her. It lands on the lampshade, hanging precariously by the sharp spoke atop the antique stained-glass.

A satisfied sound escapes from Trixie’s mouth, and she grabs one of Katya’s hands and brings it between her legs. She’s already wet, just enough for Katya to coat her fingers and bring it up and over her folds to the rest of her. Trixie moans at Katya’s fingers drifting lazily over her sensitive skin. Her rough fingertips dull the sensation, but she can still feel the silken wetness gliding over her, dampening her short, dark hairs.

The fire logs crackle and settle in and a burst of heat emanates from their movement. Trixie’s fingers are so tight on Katya’s shoulders as she drags her fingers around, not searching for any purchase or destination. Katya can feel her getting wetter, and she teases two fingers at her entrance and Trixie groans and angles her hips to take them in.

Katya doesn’t have to do anything once Trixie sits down on her fingers. They slip in with only a little give and a gasp from both of them. Trixie balances herself on Katya’s lap and her arms squeeze her tits tightly together so they just barely move as she bounces on Katya. The sight is almost too much for Katya to take; she wishes she could rub herself against something, anything.

Instead, she sits back and watches Trixie work her fingers with twisting hips and flexing thighs. Her legs jiggle with every bounce and it reverberates up her hips, to her little stomach and Katya can feel her ass bouncing, too, against her legs. She looks angelic.

“Beatrice,” Katya groans before she can catch herself. Trixie whines, slams her hips down harder onto her hand that’s cupped around her gently.

Her chest is flushed, a pink-red that matches her parted lips and hard, pinched nipples. Katya’s hips buck up involuntarily at the sight and it pushes her fingers deeper inside Trixie, drawing out another, more strangled whine. Her  underwear is starting to rub her raw with how wet she is at Trixie riding her with abandon. The movements push her hand down just barely enough to tease the bundle of nerves that shoot fire through her every time they make contact.

Katya can see goosebumps on Trixie’s arms and chest and she wonders if they’re from being cold or from how good she feels, judges by her mouth hanging open and closed eyes that it’s the latter, and moves to grip her ass with tight fingers. It’s so big, she couldn’t possibly hold all of it at once, but she makes do with the bottom of her cheek, pulling it up and out so Trixie can sit deeper on her fingers.

Somewhere in the back of Katya’s mind she remembers that the living room curtains are wide open in front of them, exposing Trixie’s ass and Katya’s gasping face to the country road and all who travel on it.

Trixie looks so good; she looks like she isn’t thinking about anything but her own pleasure. She takes Katya’s fingers in as far as they’ll go and she grinds down more. Katya meets her every thrust, wishes she could give her more as Trixie’s eyes roll back under fluttering lids. Katya could sit here forever, half-clothed and fucking Trixie into a stupor.

Katya can’t stop staring at Trixie’s breasts, big and threatening to pop out over her arms each time she bounces enthusiastically. She dips her head and takes one into her mouth, and Trixie shivers and buries her hands in Katya’s hair, pulls her face tighter to her chest so Katya can barely breathe around the ample flesh. She grazes her teeth over a nipple and Trixie keens, bunches her hair between her fingers even tighter when Katya pulls at it.

Trixie pivots her hips to rub herself against the rise of Katya’s palm, all of it slick and lacking any friction, and her whine turns into a loud moan.

“Fuck me,” Trixie gasps.

Katya moans and kisses up her chest and neck, nips at her chin and presses her lips to hers achingly hard. She moves her free hand from Trixie’s ass to the back of her head and she pulls up hard with her other hand at her g-spot.

Trixie’s moans come faster with Katya’s quick, practiced movements. She fucks into Trixie just how she knows she likes it, angled and hard and relentless. It only serves to make Trixie even wetter; Katya can tell she isn’t going to last much longer.

For an agonizing time Katya keeps her pace, her face inches from Trixie’s, watching her shiver out breaths and suck hot air in. Katya’s sweating, it’s rolling down her temples and soaking her sweater, but she doesn’t stop, not even when her wrist begins to cramp up.

Instead, she leans forward and pushes Trixie back on the couch.  She lands softly on a throw pillow, long blonde hair splayed out around her. Katya maneuvers out from under her heavy ass and with the new positon she discards her sweater before rubbing Trixie’s clit with her free hand just fast enough to make Trixie moan even louder. Katya swears if she had neighbors they’d hear her easily.

“Yeah,” Trixie breathes, then whines quietly, “God, it’s so good. You fuck me so good.”

“I thought you wanted me to make love to you?” Katya grins lopsidedly, huffing with every thrust. Her body is aching, hot and tired, but she won’t stop until Trixie shouts and trembles underneath her and she can see the fire stoked in her eyes.

Trixie lifts a leg and Katya pulls it up over her shoulder without a second thought.

“Shut up,” Trixie pants.

Katya laughs.

“Clever.” She pushes down on Trixie’s leg, bringing it closer to her own shoulder, and it gives easily. Her thigh is soft between them, pressed between their breasts. Katya’s nipple grazes the goosebumped flesh as she thrusts and it makes her work faster. “Come for me, darlin’,” she breathes. She can feel her own orgasm building just from watching Trixie moan and writhe beneath her.

Trixie’s breathing hitches and she whimpers. Her legs shake slightly as Katya bears down on her, pumping her fingers in and out faster and more angled, fucking into her roughly.

“Come on, let me hear you, come for me.”

Katya tugs a little on Trixie’s hair and she yelps, and Katya knows it’s the end. She can feel Trixie’s orgasm building, hear her short moans grow higher in pitch, until she’s yelling, shaking and coming hard on her hand.

She rides it out, her ass and thighs flexing, and Katya kisses the back of her leg the whole time, fucks her slowly as she watches Trixie meet her thrusts at first then shy away from them, jumping when Katya’s fingers slide into her.

Then it’s quiet, with only Trixie’s whimpering and Katya’s huffs. She lets her leg down before she slides her fingers out of Trixie slowly, wipes them on her thigh.

The air hitting her sweat-soaked skin cools her almost immediately and she shivers a little as she moves to lay down on Trixie’s chest. But Trixie’s hand is pushing against her, and she sits up slowly to stare at her with half-lidded eyes.

“Sit back,” Trixie says, and Katya moves to sit on the couch.

Trixie slips onto the floor on her knees and pulls her forward on the seat until her ass is nearly hanging off completely. Trixie pinches the winter layer of fat there and it’s Katya who’s squealing now, making Trixie laugh lustily before she sits up to kiss her.

Trixie whispers something to Katya as she kisses down her cheek, her jaw to her neck, where she runs her tongue against her skin and digs at her arteries. Katya can feel the blood rushing to her head, her fingertips going numb with arousal and she wants a cigarette, she wants Trixie in her mouth so she grabs at a hand kneading her breast and sticks her fingers there instead. Trixie moans as Katya sucks gently, slipping her tongue between her digits and wrapping around the tips.

Trixie moans into her neck and her other hand tucks between them against Katya’s short hairs. She presses her palm against Katya and she gasps around her fingers and bucks up against her, their stomachs touching with the movement.

Katya needs more of Trixie and now, and Trixie seems to know because she pulls her fingers out of Katya’s mouth and kisses her again.

She’s never been kissed like this before, slow and with such meaning. Every movement of Trixie’s lips draws something out from inside Katya and it’s so powerful she wants to cry, and she does whimper when Trixie’s hand moves between them to pinch her nipple lightly and massage the little fat on her chest. Trixie sighs back, it sounds so light and blissful in Katya’s ears.

“You’re so beautiful,” Trixie whispers. Katya keeps kissing her through her words and it makes Trixie laugh a little. Her hand slips down Katya’s chest and runs against the contours of her ribs, her abs flexing in anticipation, and she grips her waist gently with one hand as she pushes herself back to look Katya in the eyes. “Did you know that?”

Katya blinks at her. She’s in a complete daze under Trixie’s spell, she can’t even move her arms to touch her. All she can do is cry.

Trixie sees her tears prickling and she tuts and frowns a little.

“If no one’s ever told you how beautiful you are,” She says a little louder, “Then they’re all blind.”

Trixie’s eyes slip past Katya’s again, like the first night they met, and her gaze melts down her body slowly, past her heaving chest and knotted bellybutton, landing at coarse, dark hair.

Her thumbs rub Katya’s hips absentmindedly as she stares at that spot before nudging Katya’s knees open so she can fit between her legs.

Katya moans a little in anticipation of Trixie’s mouth on her, and when she feels her hot breath against the crook of her thigh she gasps and almost knees her in the head.

It makes Trixie laugh against her skin and then she runs her tongue along the tendons on the inside of her thigh. She grabs at the other with a strong hand and plants kisses all around Katya’s center. She won’t touch her just yet and it’s making Katya crazy as she watches Trixie bury her nose in her hair. She can feel her fingers slip up towards her opening and she tries to arch her back to meet her halfway, but Trixie moves away from her and laughs at her a little.

“Go slow,” Trixie says quietly. She lifts her head and Katya gazes down at her. “Let me make love to you, too.”

Trixie smiles and keeps her eye contact through fluttering lashes as she dips down and runs her tongue flat against Katya finally. She drags it upwards slowly and Katya groans, an arm automatically reaches down to run fingers through her hair and the other props her up a little.

She watches Trixie lick her slowly over and over, she can feel her warm tongue parting her and dragging her wetness along her until Katya’s bucking up into her face a little, trying to get Trixie’s tongue on her clit, soaking her cheeks and chin.

And Trixie finally does it, runs her tongue around the bundle of nerves languidly, lightly, and Katya heaves out a whine as her head falls back. Her hair is everywhere and it’s suffocating but she can’t care because Trixie’s lips are sucking on her gently as she runs her tongue in circles, and it’s the best thing.

Katya shouts as Trixie sucks harder. She licks her clit roughly once, twice, and Katya’s full-on crying now, the pleasure Trixie’s giving her warping around what she said.

She sits back up and tugs at Trixie’s hair and bounces up against her mouth. Trixie lets her fuck her face, keeps her tongue tight and stationary for her to rub against.

Katya feels a slender, soft finger plunge inside of her, she can tell how wet she is with how easily it slips in, and she pumps it lazily, in and out of time with Katya’s steady thrusts. Trixie moans around Katya sliding all over her face, Katya can feel her huffing little breaths of excitement and it makes her even hotter for her, that Trixie lets her fuck her like this and loves it, too.

“Oh, baby,” Katya groans. “I’m…oh, its so good.”

Trixie hums back and adds another finger gently, everything she does is gentle and Katya’s rushing against her face, it’s so opposite of their usual trends and it makes Katya’s belly hot. Trixie’s curling her fingers up and pulling at Katya a little, straightening them out with every push in by the time she’s pulling out they’re nudging Katya’s G-spot dead-on.

She sucks Katya’s clit into her mouth again, this time harder, and Katya yelps, tries to thrust faster but Trixie’s mouth and other hand are holding her still and her tongue is flicking impossibly fast against her. Katya is getting hotter, her tears are still rolling freely and she’s sobbing from pleasure and something else she can’t place- her head is swimming.

The silence amplifies how wet she is against Trixie’s fingers and she can hear her sucking and moaning a little, and Katya loses it.

She throws her head back with a shriek and comes, trembling and clenching Trixie between strong thighs, bucking up against her tight grip.

By the time she comes down Trixie’s dragging her to the bedroom by her hand and tucking her into bed. She falls asleep against her chest to Trixie running her fingers through her hair and humming some song on the radio.

 

 

 

Katya’s woken by the metallic ringing of the telephone infiltrating her dreams. It draws her out slowly, hidden in the fogginess, and even when she wakes up it takes her a full five seconds to figure out the sound’s source.

Then her eyes spring open and the bed squeaks as she jumps up and races to the kitchen bleary-eyed.

The sun is filtering through the half-open blinds on her back door, orange and piercing with the snow magnifying its brilliance. It doesn’t help her vision, and she squints as she stumbles to the receiver. She realizes she’s standing naked in the middle of her kitchen when her skin prickles. She misses Trixie already.

“Hello?”

“You need to get over here.” It’s Pearl, though if Katya had any more friends she wouldn’t be able to tell. Pearl’s voice is lower than its normal dull monotone, and she sounds on the verge of being frantic. “If Trixie’s there, don’t bring her. Just come here as soon as possible.”

“Jesus, Pearl, is everything okay?”

Her attitude is enough to wake Katya up fully, and she shuffles from foot to foot anxiously.

“Listen, no one’s dying, but it’s bad, okay? Just get over here.”

The line goes dead and Katya stares at the mint green phone in her hand before slowly placing it back on the cradle.

She creeps into the bedroom and sees Trixie still fast asleep in the semi-darkness. Katya quickly changes into jeans and a heavy flannel before closing the thick green curtains fully and shutting the door quietly behind her.

Back in the kitchen, Katya stomps on her muddy boots and shrugs on her heaviest coat, hesitates before scribbling a note to Trixie on the stationary she bought Katya “for important phone calls,” then heads outside in the freezing cold morning to Pearl’s house.

It would have been faster to take her truck, but she wasn’t sure about the recent snowfall and the possibility of her getting stuck when Pearl sounded nervous as hell isn’t an idea that thrills her. So she trudges through the six inches of snow with her hands deep in her Carhartt pockets, wishes she’d put a hat on but is happy that at least her hair is loose and somewhat protective.

Her nose is already running from the change in temperature. She sniffs loudly as she wonders what Pearl could be so concerned about that she felt the need to call Katya when the sun has barely risen. She’s normally not even up before nine, save for market days.

Katya doesn’t want to acknowledge the ball of knots in her stomach steadily growing. She knows what they’re from; she knows what Pearl is most likely going to say, and Katya hopes against hope that it isn’t it. She needs just a little more time, Trixie needs it, just until the spring.

Of course, they’ve been spoiled with the time they’ve been given, which is a ridiculous thought to Katya, and she wants to kick herself for thinking it. But it’s true. It’s been too quiet for too long, and there’s no chance of it staying that way for much longer. And if Pearl’s going to tell Katya what she thinks she is, Katya needs to come up with a plan, and fast. And she needs to convince Trixie to move in with her permanently.

At the tree line between their houses, Katya stops to catch her breath and light a cigarette. She brushes the fresh snow off a tree stump and perches there, smoking until half of it is ash in too short of a time. It’s not satisfying like she thought it would be. Her stomach hurts.

She tosses it to the ground, half-smoked, stomps on it for good measure, then carries on her way, head tucked down. She can feel the worn path beneath the snow, the shallow dip Pearl’s created from farming and that Katya reinforced with her pickup. She contemplates running the rest of the way- she can see the smoke curling up out of Pearl’s chimney clearly now, gray and dreary against the bright dawn- thinks twice and settles on walking at a faster clip.

Trixie’s in bed still, sleeping heavy and warmly. Katya can see her in her mind’s eye, the mountainous curves under her thick blankets, her leg hiked up and thrown over Katya’s side. She wants to curl up next to her so bad, smell her hair and skin and wipe the sleep from her eyes. When she gets home, Katya’s going to grab the banana bread from the fridge that Trixie made bring it to bed, wake her up and feed her little bits and kiss her.

Pearl’s hanging out the front door as Katya arrives and she ushers her in with a hand, impatient and unlike herself.

“Come to the kitchen, there’s coffee.”

Katya walks through Pearl’s living room on autopilot, maneuvering around her plush, wine-red chaise lounge, the lamps with tinkling glass crystals, the piles of books and numerous flower pots placed wherever there’s space. She wants to stop at the roaring fireplace and warm her hands and her face, but the promise of coffee and Pearl’s insistence that she hurry sends her past it.

Jinkx is pouring them all coffee in clean, white mugs. Katya sits at the small circular table in the center of Pearl’s spacious kitchen and the wicker backing of the chair creaks a little with her weight.

When Katya reaches for her mug, she sees that a peculiar, angular symbol has been drawn on it with what looks like ash. She’s had coffee at Pearl’s enough times to know what it’s doing there.

“What’s this one for?” She gestures with her mug before sipping carefully at the steaming black liquid.

“Protection,” Pearl sits down to her right and holds her mug between two thin hands. She doesn’t look at Katya.

Katya deems the coffee cool enough to consume and she takes a deep drink from it. When she sets the mug down, she looks over at Jinkx, who’s sitting to her left and wringing her hands, staring out the window behind Pearl. She turns to look at her friend and she’s gazing at the grain of the wood table, as if she’s trying to scry with the patterns.

Katya doesn’t want to push it because she’s scared, so she looks around the kitchen instead. The cabinets are pure white, just like the mugs, and the thin glass panes show off a myriad of mismatched bowls and plates, different sized glasses and serving dishes. Pearl’s prized carnival glass collection lies on the top shelves, presented tastefully and seemingly for her own enjoyment.

The counter is barren with the exception of the percolator and the silver tin holding coffee grounds. Up against the tiled backsplash rests the other tins holding various spices and herbs, flour and sugar. Her fridge is newer than Katya’s, something out of the current decade, and it runs almost silently, smooth chrome and magnets holding up notes and lists.

On her stove, just as smooth as the fridge, sits a large pot, and something’s beginning to boil inside it, the flames from the gas eye licking the copper bottom.

Pearl’s sigh turns Katya’s attention back to the couple, who are staring at each other with the silent communication that comes with two people knowing each other perfectly. Jinkx nods almost imperceptibly, and then Pearl nods back before turning to look at Katya.

“So yesterday, Jinkx was invited out to dinner by Violet.”

Katya’s heart jumps into the pit in her stomach and is swallowed whole. It’s exactly what she thought. She sets her jaw.

“According to Jin, Violet was very drunk and wouldn’t shut up about you. She only brought Jinkx there to get information out of her, and since my girl’s not an idiot, she knew exactly what was happening.”

“We used to be friends,” Jinkx offers. She sips her tan-colored coffee before continuing. “I’ve known her since grade school; I could tell she was trying to figure out your relationship with Trixie. It was obvious after her fifth cocktail.”

Katya blinks and nods. She’s only half-listening, because she knows what’s going to be said. Her sitting there quietly is merely a formality, a quality assurance check that her mind hasn’t jumped off the deep end.

“Katya, she knows you and Trixie are together,” Pearl says. She looks strained, like she wishes she could say anything else, but it comes as no surprise to her.

Violet’s piercing eyes at Perot’s haven’t left her in the five months since the encounter. The flash of recognition and anger…and jealousy, Katya realizes.

“Yeah, she saw us together once, a while back,” Katya shrugs. Her coffee rests between her hands and it’s too hot to hold so tightly but she doesn’t stop. “Why are you telling me this?”

Pearl looks at Jinkx again before taking in a deep breath.

“We think she’s going to tell Trixie’s family.”

It goes through Katya, flows through her like the microwaves she’s been told will hurt her even though she can’t feel them. It passes through her, and then it slingshots back and hits her hard in the back, and her eyelashes are fluttering and she’s gripping the mug even tighter. Katya’s staring at her coffee intently, afraid of what she’ll see if she looks up. She doesn’t want them frowning, pouting for her and Trixie. She wants them angry, but they seem to have simmered already.

“Why,” Katya says darkly. “Why do you think that? And when do you think it’ll happen? Do I need to call the house and let Trix know?”

“This is why we didn’t want her coming over,” Pearl places a gentle hand on Katya’s tight wrist. Katya glances up at her and she looks imploring, nervous as hell. “We don’t know for sure, and…if Trixie ran home to defend herself when Violet didn’t even say anything…”

“All she said was that she’s going to do something,” Jinkx says. “She was obviously angry and she wants to get back at you. She said something about her “leftovers”.”

“Get back at me?” Katya scoffs. “She’s the one who fucked another woman when we were together! Get back at me. Right.”

Katya pushes the chair back and it scrapes across the wood floor noisily. She stands and paces the length of the kitchen, holding her mug to her lips. She sips at it just barely; she can’t taste it anymore.

“And leftovers! Is that what I am to her. Her fucking leftovers? She’s disgusting, she deserves to be dragged through the dirt.”

Violet is unpredictable. Because of that fact alone, Katya has no idea if she meant anything she said to Jinkx, if she was just saying it to get a rise out of her or to have Trixie out herself, as Pearl suggested. And Katya wouldn’t put it past her to walk right up to the Mattel residence and cry alligator tears as she warns them of their daughter’s sinful ways.

She wishes Violet had waited just a little longer.

“I have to go,” Katya looks up at the two still sitting at the table. “I have to go.”

She puts her mug on the counter and takes a deep breath, inhaling the savory smell of whatever they’re cooking. It barely registers.

“Please just keep her safe,” Jinkx says, twisted around in her chair to look at Katya with sad eyes. “I’m sorry this happened. I didn’t tell her anything, I promise.”

“I know, Jinkx, I’m not upset with you.”

Katya walks quickly over to her and holds her hands in hers. She looks at the redhead imploringly, not searching for anything but hoping Jinkx will see inside her instead.

“She’s awful. And I bet you she already knew everything before she came to you; she just wanted to take as many people down with her as possible. I’m going home, I’ve gotta- I’ve gotta go get Trix.”

Katya rushes out of the kitchen, pokes her head back in to utter a “thanks,” then jogs the whole way back to the house, the sun almost over the trees.

She follows her tamped-down footsteps but it isn’t enough for her to avoid tripping a few times, or for her breath to be heavy and staggered when she reaches the back door.

It’s still unlocked, and Katya slams it shut and strips off her jacket and boots in the center of the kitchen.

She rushes to the bedroom only to find the door closed with a piece of stationary taped to it:

_Mama called. Be back later. Kisses!_

“Fuck.”

Katya sobs once, a big, childish sound, and curses the tears welling in her eyes.

She spins back around and heads to the kitchen, picks up the phone and rotates her finger once around the dial. But she doesn’t release it.

If she calls the Mattels.

It’s not a complete sentence, and Katya can’t bear to finish it. No realistic answer will end well, it’s not a pleasant phone call at midnight, like they used to have. It’s not Katya calling Trixie to remind her not to forget her underwear this time, or her bathing suit, or her father’s countless bottles of alcohol. This is a phone call to a hospital, a bated-breath call to make sure your loved one’s name isn’t on the list.

If she calls the Mattels, either they’ll know or they will know shortly after, and she can’t justify calling Trixie at nine in the morning for anything other than the obvious.

And plus, her mother called Trixie _at Katya’s_. That can’t be good.

She remembers that Trixie drove all the way out to her house in her Cadillac and her eyes close with the fear of Trixie sliding off the dirt road, stuck in a ditch somewhere.

She’ll give her till noon. If she doesn’t hear from her by then, she’ll call, parents be damned. And if they don’t know where she is, Katya will get in her pickup and search the streets for her until she finds her, and she’ll take her home and wrap her up and plan to whisk her away.

 

 

The morning is spent in a listless daze. Katya’s mind vacillates between worrying about Trixie to nothing at all but the low noise of the fire place, a slow turn of the mind like a hot cheek on a cool pillow. She stares at the clock by her bed but she can’t make heads or tails of it. The barn needs cleaning.

The bedroom is cold, a consequence of sharing a wall with the back of the fire place. She buries herself in blankets, thick and once warm with Trixie’s heat, until only her face is peeking out, facing the window. She’s still cold, but she shivers a little less now. She wishes she could curl up next to her, haul one of her thick thighs over her hip and warm up quick against her chest.

Katya wants to know what’s happening, and it kills her that she doesn’t. If only she could be beside her, even waiting outside in her truck, if only she’d come home sooner and offered to drive her there. She would have. If she had known.

Breakfast was had and then thrown up, coffee the only thing she can keep down, and she feels drowsy with it, nauseous. A headache is threatening to come on and Katya curses her body for a few short moments before falling back into her dissociated gaze.

Trixie must be so scared right now. There’s no way her family doesn’t know; if Violet told Jinkx she was planning on outing her then she’d have done it by now. Violet isn’t one to stew.

Katya wonders what Trixie’s saying back. If she’s defending herself with that big mouth of hers, or sobbing with it, or holding it shut tight until she can get her clothes packed and head for the door. Katya knows that she’ll be proud of her no matter what, even if she gives in and does whatever heinous act they consider cleansing. That she even let them confront her about her sexuality is enough of a risk for Katya to be immensely proud of her.

The very real chance of Trixie getting sent away to “get better,” in reality going to a mental hospital where she’ll be left alone, utterly away from Katya without so much as a note, terrifies her. It makes Katya’s throat tighten, and she fights for breath as her eyes well up with tears thinking about Trixie getting shock therapy, or sedated, or put with others more unfortunate than her.

The nearest mental hospital is in Kentucky, hours and hours away from her. She might not even be sent there; maybe she’d be sent to a convent, to an aunt in another state.

In a burst of compassion, she vows never to move until she hears from Trixie again, a vow that sounds a little ridiculous when whispered aloud to herself but makes sense in the deepest corners of her heart.

 

 

At 11:45, Katya gets up. She unwinds herself slowly, the bones in her hips and back cracking, and she takes in a deep breath before swinging her feet to the floor. The hardwood is cold; she’s going to give in to Trixie’s suggestion of big, intricate rugs covering her house. It’s a good idea.

She hops on one foot as she puts on a pair of wool socks over the ones she’s already wearing. Her sweater gets doubled, too, and her jeans will just have to do the best they can. Her wool-lined pair were ripped the previous winter, when she got caught on her barbed wire on a drunken stumble home from Pearl’s, and she can never remember to mend them.

Her boots are found in the kitchen where they were kicked off hours before, as is her jacket, and Katya heads for the back door, grabbing her keys from the wood counter on the way.

She stops with one hand on the door handle, half twisted open, and looks over her shoulder at the phone. There’s a moment where she considers calling ahead of her arrival, but it sounds just as bad as showing up unannounced. She breathes deeply, says a silent prayer that Trixie doesn’t call while she’s out only to find no one picking up, and then steps out into the freezing day.

Even at noon only a few icicles are dripping, and Katya glances at the thermometer nailed to the porch pillar and sees that it’s just below thirty degrees. Her truck will start, but it won’t be easy, and it won’t be warm in the cab until she’s halfway to town. Katya wishes she’d brought her gloves but she pries open the door handle with freezing, bony fingers and slams it shut one she’s in.

The engine cranks and rumbles to life after a couple of tries. Katya lets it idle as she rubs her fingers, sifts through the glovebox for an extra pair and comes up with nothing. At least Trixie left her scarf in here from their trek to the woodpile at the forest edge; Katya wraps her fingers in it, leaves it slack between her hands so she can steer and shift. She flips her Stetson on her head and shifts into gear, makes a wide turn through the snow and creeps down to the dirt road.

The snow has been compacted by a few vehicles so it’s not hard to navigate, and Katya’s thankful but she takes it slower than normal anyway. The leisureliness of her pace drives her crazy, makes her grit her teeth and grip the steering wheel hard. There’s nothing she can do to get to Trixie any faster, though, so she heaves another breath and tries to relax.

Katya doesn’t trust the Mattels to give Trixie what she needs. They’d never understand her, anyway, they couldn’t. Katya knows this from Trixie telling her that her family found the Stonewall riots detestable, an abomination, embarrassing to American culture. Trixie had whispered the account to Katya even though they had been the only ones in the corner of Busted Saddles, huddled around a table while everyone else slow-danced to Joni Mitchell. Trixie’s face had been forlorn and drooping. There was a mascara smudge underneath her left eye that lasted the night.

Sometimes Katya can’t believe that someone like Trixie came from them. As the baby of the family, she knows she could have grown up milquetoast, or petulant, but she isn’t.  She’s compassionate, loud-mouthed, and brave.

Any sign of the Cadillac is missed as Katya’s truck hits the pavement on the outskirts of town, and she relaxes a little. The roads are clearer too, if a little slushy and icy in spots, and she picks up her pace as much as she dares.

But Trixie not being on the side of the road can only mean one thing: she’s at home. And Katya hates that option more, she trusts the cold winds to treat her better than her own flesh and blood.

The heat kicks in and Katya sighs in relief and blasts the fan. Her fingers warm up fast enough and she unwinds the scarf and tosses it to the side before settling into her seat.

Big Rock seems to be shut down for the day with the snow; city dwellers never seem to know how to operate in it. Only the diner is occupied, the neon “Open” buzzing on and off in the window. She makes her way through town fast enough, and finds herself on the Mattel’s street before she can prepare herself for it.

Seemingly everyone is outside. Kids are throwing snowballs or building snowmen, and a couple of teenagers have attempted to construct an igloo; it’s slanted but the kids are crawling all over it anyway. She can make out snow boots as they disappear into its chamber.

A puffy red jacket comes barreling towards the road and is caught by the hood by an older kid just in time, and Katya sees a mom look over from the group of housewives to lazily yell before turning back around, adjusting the baby on her hip while she takes a drag of her cigarette.

A group of fathers stand between two houses, smoking cigars in their parkas and ignoring their children screeching in the distance.

All the homes are well-built, glimmering with real and fake icicles and flashing red Christmas lights. The windows are high and wide and the front lawns are actually lawns, the hedges manicured underneath the snow. Katya counts the holly trees and gets lost after the fourth home in a row. They’re all variations on a theme, some one story, most two or even three, and by the third stop sign she’s memorized half the Sears Roebuck Home Catalogue.

Smoke curls out of the chimneys. She wonders how much it costs to heat such large places; she wonders how anyone in Big Rock could afford it.

Katya’s blue truck stands out against the dirty slush beneath the tires and everyone stops to watch her pass, warm inside with her hat on. Katya can see the chattering teeth and red noses of the kids and adults alike; she can feel their eyes burning holes into her. The thought that they know why she’s in their part of town wiggles itself in and Katya can’t get rid of it, the paranoia far too appealing.

And there it is, the Mattel residence. It’s a sizeable home, Katya thinks it a mansion nestled between two even larger mansions, twinkling lights on in the middle of the day. There’s a concrete fountain in the front lawn, frozen solid. As she gets closer she notices tiny shadows on the ice and then sees miniature figure skaters, frozen themselves on one twirling foot or holding hands in perpetual happiness.

Katya pulls up to the curb and reaches to turn the truck off but stops, leaves it running as she pulls her hat down further on her head and steps out onto the sidewalk.

Her boots crunch in the salt beneath her, steady as her pace up to the front door. She can barely hear the children hollering over the ringing in her ears, and maybe the parents have hushed them anyway, so they can listen in on the drama that’s sure to come. The evergreens in her peripherals stand out almost in technicolor against the whitewash of the front of the house, the brass doorknocker the only thing breaking it up.

Katya steels herself in front of the door, boots on the welcome mat, and as she lifts her fist to knock, the door flies open and a rush of heat hits her face.

“…Don’t want to come back anyway!”

Trixie stalks out the door and turns forward just in time to see Katya in front of her. She runs into her, the suitcases on either side of her smacking into Katya’s knees.

Katya catches her by the shoulders and Trixie looks at her with complete surprise.

Everything is silent. Katya can’t hear anything, not even the babies whining at their mothers’ chests, and she’s keenly aware of the figure standing behind Trixie but she ignores it as she stares into her big blue eyes. She’s so warm beneath her fingers, her quickened breath puffing out condensation between them.

Trixie bursts into tears and buries her face into Kaya’s neck. Katya wraps her arms around her and is forced to look into her father’s eyes, hard and small, much unlike his daughter’s. His hair is dark and almost completely gone, and his face looks like he’s fought in every war since the beginning of time, but his corduroys are pressed and his shirt crisp.

He stares at Katya with pure hatred, unable to bring his gaze down from her eyes to where she’s rubbing Trixie’s back and shushing her. A newspaper is tucked underneath an arm, like this whole situation is just a minor event in his day, and he chews on something before he speaks to Katya.

“She’s your problem now. Get off my property.”

His voice is gruff and it contrasts with the bright sob coming from behind him as he shuts the door. Katya hears a woman calling Trixie’s name but the door slams shut on her words with a force that sends her disheveled and static-filled hair flowing back.

The outside world slowly comes back in and she can hear the murmuring of the adults a few houses down and the shouts of children wondering what just happened. Katya doesn’t turn her head to look, but she wants to. She wants to give them all the middle finger and tell them to mind their own business, but the tears rolling down her neck and soaking her flannel are more important than being bold.

Trixie is crying deep and heavy, holding her suitcases at her side, and Katya grips her shoulders reassuringly before sliding her hands down her arms to take them for her.

“Let’s go home, baby.”

Trixie wipes at her eyes and looks up at her with a blotchy and swollen face. Her eyelashes are wet and clumped together; Katya can see the little bit of frost forming at the tips already. She hiccups and nods, wraps her arms around herself as she follows Katya to the truck.

Katya tosses the suitcases into the bed and helps Trixie in before rounding the engine and sitting herself behind the steering wheel. She looks over at Trixie, huddled in the corner with her Mary Janes up on the leather seat, her skirt pulled down over her legs. Katya wants to slide over and warm up her bare arms that are a little blue with the outside air, but she settles for shrugging off her jacket and draping it over her.

She lingers before her face for a few moments until Trixie looks up, and then she kisses her, long and slow and openly on the side of the road, and she hopes to God Trixie’s father is watching her cup his daughter’s face more lovingly than any of her family ever has.

Trixie’s got a sad smile on, but it fades as Katya pulls back onto the road and heads back to the house.

It’s a silent and slow drive, one that’s punctuated by Trixie’s sniffles and small sobs. Once they hit the dirt road, Trixie crawls over to the middle of the seat and lays down, rests her head in Katya’s lap. Katya wraps her right hand around her ribs and holds her as close as possible between gear changes.

The snow starts back up just a few miles from home, and by the time Katya pulls into her driveway it’s coming down hard and fast, the tire tracks on the road already gone.

She hands Trixie the keys and grabs her snow-covered suitcases as Trixie trudges to the backdoor and lets herself in. Katya follows her and shuts the door behind her, sets the dripping suitcases on the floor. Her cheeks burn with the temperature change and she shoves her hands into her pockets to warm them up faster.

Trixie’s leaning against the counter, her head just barely resting on the cabinets above. Her eyes are closed, and she looks like she’s aged a decade in a matter of hours. She doesn’t look pained or even depressed; she looks exhausted. Katya doesn’t know what she’s endured, and part of her doesn’t want to know, but she’ll listen to anything Trixie needs to say.

Right now she isn’t saying anything, but her lower lip is quivering, and Katya tosses her hat on the table and steps across the kitchen in record time to take her into her arms properly, press her chest and face into her and feel their bodies tight against each other.

Trixie shakes with sobs. With every one she gets weaker and Katya can feel her sliding down between her and the counter. She hooks her hands underneath Trixie’s bottom and picks her up, and Trixie wraps her legs around her and lets Katya carry her to the living room, where she sets her down on the couch before joining her.

Trixie dissolves in her lap, fanned out over her legs, her hair just as messy and dry as Katya’s.

She knows what happened. Without Trixie saying anything at all, Katya knows she’s been displaced, removed from her family’s home ungraciously, loudly, and violently.

There’s a bruise forming on her right upper arm and it looks too large to be her mother’s doing. Katya can’t tell what she’s saying but she picks up enough to be able to piece together the narrative, just barely.

When she sits up and wipes her cheeks, the blue of her eyes is piercing against the red rims. Her nose is red, too, and Katya can see where she bit her lip earlier, enough to draw a little blood. It’s bleeding and flowing through the wrinkles in her plush lips.

The ringing in Katya’s ears isn’t from the engine of her pickup. And she wants to listen to Trixie, she really does, she wants to be able to tell her exactly what she needs to do, she wants to be able to drive back down to the Mattel residence and kick open the door, grab all of Trixie’s things she couldn’t fit in her suitcases and take them back with her. Trixie babbles on and Katya nods but she can’t keep up, she’s too lost in her own thoughts.

Instead she stands and lifts her up under the arms. Trixie looks dumbfounded as Katya walks her by the waist to the bathroom.

Her grandparents’ clawfoot tub is an heirloom, ancient and heavy, toted across state lines when they came from Kentucky to settle in Big Rock. There’s a chip in the rim closest to the back wall, where one of Katya’s older brothers slammed another brother into the side of it during a bath time feud; he had been fine, but his loose tooth had made an early exit and taken a bit of the tub with it.

Katya draws the bathwater and undresses Trixie while the tub fills. The white noise has always comforted Katya, a promise of calm and heat, two things she knows Trixie needs right now. She wants to give it to her herself, but she can’t. The clawfoot tub can buy her time as she tries to figure out what to say.

Trixie’s wearing a woolen circle skirt and it pools wine-red at her feet when Katya unzips it. The pressure of the fabric left an imprint across Trixie’s stomach, just above her belly button, and Katya rubs at it a little, scratches it with her blunted fingernails. She can feel Trixie’s breath hit her face in a long sigh as she leans back against the counter.

Her cashmere sweater, short-sleeved and camel, follows suit, lands closer to the door, and her bra loops over the doorknob.

Katya hooks her fingers over the elastic of Trixie’s underwear with one hand while she turns off the water with the other, and Trixie shimmies and steps out of them.

It’s silent now, with the exception of the faucet dripping and Trixie sniffing every once in a while. Katya holds her hand as she steps into the tub, gently at first and then with quickened relief as she sinks into the water.

Her sigh is shaky as the water hits her neck. Katya sits on her knees beside the tub and pushes Trixie’s bangs off her head, slicked back with the water on her hand.

Katya still doesn’t know what to say. She can’t look into Trixie’s eyes, searching and blank at the same time, roaming around her bathroom trying to find something to focus on, but they’re the only thing Katya comes back to. That and her chapped lips, spiderwebbed eyelashes.

“I’m sorry,” She whispers, smoothing a hand over her bangs again, and Trixie’s eyes slide over to hers. They meet and it doesn’t feel good. A connection is made but it’s not something Katya enjoys; it’s the connection between two people who have been shunned. Trixie’s eyes are tired and drooping at the corners, they reflect the dreariness of January, the barren landscapes hidden beneath snow.

“I know,” Trixie says.

She swallows thickly and sits up, scoots down the tub so she can dip her head back into the water and soak her hair. It’s the color of hay, and it fills the tub behind Trixie completely, like an algae bloom.

Katya watches her sink into the water completely with only her knees peeking out. Her face is emotionless. She looks like a corpse sealed in resin, little air bubbles floating to the top to pop and leave a clear view. Katya wants to sink her hand into the water and touch her face, hold her cheek until she opens her eyes to a blurred vision of Katya leaning over her, but she doesn’t. She simply watches Trixie, holding her breath, scraping her nails against the bottom of the tub and taking some paint with them, until she can’t hold her breath anymore.

Trixie splashes out of the tub gasping for air and rubs at her face. She catches her breath, chest heaving, before she turns to look at Katya again.

“I can’t wash my hair.”

She holds her waist as Katya does it for her, soaps up the long blonde ropes. She washes it in sections, as she washes her own hair, too long to be heaped up in a pile on top of her head. Trixie leans into her touch as she rubs her scalp, her breath jumpy.

Katya whispers for her to lean back, and Trixie’s tears flow into the bathwater as Katya rinses her hair, her fingers grip at the sides of the tub, thin and white.

Katya conditions it, too, and then she takes off her flannel, wet above the elbow and down the front, and leans over Trixie to wash her body.

“What did it feel like?” Trixie asks quietly.

The water splashes between them. Suds fall into the bath and form a film that Trixie breaks with her toes gently as Katya scrubs at her arms and underarms with an ancient washcloth.

“It felt like what I imagine being burnt alive feels like,” Katya says finally.

She soaps up the washcloth again with the withering bar before running it over her chest, and Trixie sits on her knees and pushes up so Katya can reach her stomach and waist.

“Yeah,” Trixie nods. “I agree.”

“I’ve never felt more raw in my life,” Katya continues, finding somewhere inside herself the courage to say more. She doesn’t know how. “It felt like they had torn my skin off and sent me into a stampede.”

“Daddy says I’m a shame to the family,” Trixie says suddenly. “He’s embarrassed that I’m a lesbian.”

Katya stops her movements and rests her hands in the bathwater, watches Trixie’s eyes for a sign of an incoming cry.

It doesn’t come. They look hardened, defiant.

“He said he never wants to see me again, and if he catches me in town he’ll make my life a living hell.”

They stare at each other in silence for a moment.

“Well that’s impossible,” Katya mumbles before carrying on.

Trixie lays back in the water as Katya stands up. She picks up one of Trixie’s legs easily and scrubs it down, holds her by the ankle to wash her foot and it tickles Trixie, makes her giggle a little.

“Other one,” Katya taps at her ankle.

“I don’t care.”

It’s the first thing that’s come out of Trixie’s mouth with any more force than a feather floating through the wind, and it gives Katya pause halfway down the second leg.

“You don’t?” Katya looks at her.

Trixie shakes her head.

“He can die a bigoted bastard, and I hope the last thing he sees is me kissing you.”

Katya huffs out a tiny laugh, taken aback by her words. She turns back to wash Trixie’s calf.

“Well, that’s the least he deserves.”

“Mama said she doesn’t hate me. She wishes I had told them instead of Violet- who, by the way, I’m going to beat the shit out of.”

Katya drops Trixie’s foot and it lands in the water with a giant splash and a yelp from Trixie.

Her face is pale as she turns to look at Trixie, who looks startled and concerned.

“God, baby…”

Katya tosses the wash cloth into the bathwater and rinses her hands before reaching for the towel hanging off to the side.

“I am! I’m going to find her and beat the ever-lovin’ hell out of her, and I hope everyone sees.”

Trixie stands in the bath and lets Katya help her onto the bath mat before drying her off briskly with the towel.

Trixie stares at Katya, but she stays silent. She’s dripping onto the tile and Katya takes her hair between her hands and wrings it out into the tub.

“Will you help me?”

Katya laughs outright, full and reverberating in the small bathroom, and Trixie quirks an eyebrow.

“I’m not joking.”

“I won’t help you, but I won’t stop you, either. She’s not worth the energy, Trixie.”

Trixie’s in the bedroom, towel on the floor as she sifts through her suitcase on Katya’s bed before Katya can even blink twice, so she follows her into the room and stands in the doorway, watches her move as she searches.

“She ruined my life.”

“Well…can’t argue with you about that,” Katya shrugs.

“She’s a bitch, a jealous bitch at that, and she deserves to fucking- fuck- where is it!” Trixie yells.

The throws her suitcase off the bed and lands on the hardwood with a thud, miscellaneous articles of clothing flying out and landing around it. Trixie’s breathing is heavy again and Katya crosses the bedroom to turn her by the shoulders.

“You need to take some deep breaths and stop thinking about it for a while,” Katya says lowly. She dips down to look into Trixie’s eyes squarely; they’re tearing up again, her lower lip is wobbling a little. “I know that’s hard, but you need to try. I’m going to take care of you, okay? Just relax.”

“I’m tired,” She whispers, and Katya lets go of her to turn the blankets and sheets down.

“Get in bed, then.”

Katya unzips her jeans and steps out of them, leaves her wool socks on and walks to the other side of the bed- her side of the bed.

Trixie climbs in with her and they settle in.

All the lights are still on in the house. It’s not conducive to sleep, but Trixie’s gripping Katya’s arm over her stomach, keeping her from turning them off. Her breaths are already steadying and Katya nuzzles into her wet hair and inhales.

It’s a twisted rite of passage, inevitable and damning. Trixie was a debutante presented to the world as an eligible housewife, and now she’s entering a spinster, an old maid, a lesbian.

Katya doesn’t use the word out loud very much, and when Trixie said it in the bath she felt goosebumps form. Somehow, the world around her had convinced Katya to believe it was a dirty word for so long, full of disappointment. The word indicated some sort of problem, an incapability to get along with the opposite sex, but it had never felt that way to Katya.

She isn’t angry at men, she just doesn’t want them in her bed.

Trixie had said it so powerfully, “I’m a lesbian,” and Katya wants nothing more than to turn her over and kiss her face, touch her with her hands and lips and legs. Trixie owns her sexuality, even in the face of her disapproving family, she stands for herself and Katya by proxy and it makes her infinitely proud of her woman.

“Baby, I love you.”

Trixie doesn’t move for a long moment, and her breath stays steady, but then she’s rolling over to look at her.

She smiles, and it’s small. But it’s a genuine smile that reaches her eyes, and she cups Katya’s face as she says, “I love you too.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Through days and nights filled with attempts to cheer Trixie up, Katya has found herself at her wits end, unable to think of anything that could speed up the process of Trixie coming to terms with her new life. So she has resigned herself to standing by, watching for signs that indicate Trixie will need her shoulder to cry on or her words to make her laugh. And even though Katya is able to separate the feelings of others from her own, she can’t keep herself from absorbing Trixie’s depression, her pain that manifests in bursts of anger and tears and strikes Katya with anxiety so fierce it rivals the attacks she had when she was younger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back. This chapter is set in late January and February 1970.

The last week of January Katya sits at the kitchen table and shuffles her savings around the pockmarked wood. She figures she has enough to up and leave whenever she wants, find a cheap motel and keep both of them afloat while she works another job and Trixie goes to school. When the bills slip through her dry fingers during the wee hours of the morning, she counts enough to get them to Nashville. It’s not far enough away, but it’s a start. And she’s seen numerous college applications on her table suggesting as much, hinting at the two hour displacement in time and space as being the cure for broken windows.

Katya lies awake at night with her hands tucked behind her head and thinks hard about what she’s going to give up for Trixie. There’s no doubt in her mind that she would do it, and there’s very little remorse or resentment. She’s old enough to know she isn’t happy where she is, that if she doesn’t make a change soon her roots will spread too far and she won’t be able to leave at all.

The move is for herself almost as much as it’s for Trixie. She lets herself admit it, with Trixie’s head on her chest and thigh over her hips. There’s nothing she wouldn’t do to make her life better, but such a big change requires more thought than she’s ever given anything, and it scares her. Katya wonders if she’s worth it, if maybe she’s a lost cause, a woman in a long line of women who have sacrificed their destinies to martyrdom. Two hours is an entire culture away, a promise of something so potentially good it makes her want to run in the opposite direction, if only Trixie weren’t holding her close and pushing forward.

Trixie fills out her applications dutifully, once a week. She’s applied to almost every university in the neighboring states, desperate enough to go anywhere that will take her away from the placenta of a city she once was nourished by. Angry and blindsided, Trixie searches for her own path, goes through ink cartridge after ink cartridge in desperation to mark it on the map. 

She tacks her rejection letters to the living room wall, a line above the fireplace mantle that stretches from corner to corner. She sits on the couch and stares at them, meditates on them, and then she gets up and plants herself at the kitchen table and wears out another cartridge. Katya’s never seen such dedication in all her years of farmwork. 

Katya isn’t worried- she knows Trixie will get into a university, knows she’s smart enough and convincing enough and, yes, pretty enough, to push her way in and find her window of opportunity. Her dedication and excitement thrill Katya, and she whispers into her stomach, between her thighs, into her armpits, how she knows Trixie will succeed, how she’s such a hard worker, diligent and wise. She imparts encouragement between her teeth and presses good energy inside of her, fingertip after fingertip. Trixie hasn’t failed her yet.

 

 

Katya creeps to the kitchen to call Pearl on February Sundays. 

In the cold, dark morning, she speaks to her in hushed tones, careful to not wake up Trixie. It reminds Katya of the phone call she got from Pearl not too long ago, and she fights the urge to shiver and scream every time. It’s still such a sensitive subject; she keeps it to herself and thinks about it when she can’t sleep.

Their conversations are slow things, filled with whatever is on their minds in the moment. Pearl talks about her recent obsession with canning and how her indoor garden is holding up; Katya talks about how Trixie hasn’t done anything but sleep and knit for a month straight.

Canning takes a back seat when Katya brings this up. Over a steaming mug of coffee, Katya pours herself into the receiver, her breath condensing on the plastic near her mouth. She’s terrified, and she can hear it in the jumpiness of her low morning voice. The coffee warms her up but it’s never enough to steady her tone.

Katya stands and stares out the window when they talk, the phone cord dragged across the floor and pooling a little at her socked feet. She digs a big toe into the wood and leans against the sink, watches the sun inch up the sky with Pearl, who Katya knows is doing the same thing from her couch.

Neither of them know why they do this. It feels just as natural as anything, being yards away and able to comment on the same screech owl, the same truck flying down the dirt road at an impossible speed. But there’s no imperative reason, no promise made to share their lives with each other. Their friendship has always been a loquacious one, thanks to Pearl and her endless source of gossip enabling Katya’s vice for talking shit, and to relegate this to a morning phone call seems unnecessary.

Unlike most conversations between the two, Katya does most of the talking. When they’re out of mundane conversations and snarky comments about Big Rock and the world at large, Pearl refills her mug in silence and Katya spills what she has tried desperately to keep to herself.

It’s almost always about Trixie; how she’s doing, what she’s eating, how many times she’s cried in the past twenty-four hours, how much Katya has absolutely no idea what to do for or about her. Those moments, when Katya’s eyes unfocus and burn with the dry winter air, when she tries so hard to find a scrap of inspiration inside herself to do more than kiss her to sleep, are the hardest of her adult life.

“I just don’t know how to help her,” Katya says. She rubs her eyes with her free hand. “I don’t feel like anything I say matters; I’ve tried everything I can think of.”

“Does she ever bring it up herself? How she’s sad?” Pearl sounds clinical, as Katya expects and wants from her.

“No.” Katya sips her coffee. “She doesn’t talk about much of anything. Johnny Cash Show- we watch that together. She likes the music on there.” She smiles. “Last night, Mama Cass was on and Trixie laughed-”

Katya stops herself, suddenly aware that she’s proud of her girlfriend for laughing, and the reality of their situation sinks into her skin more.

“You’re going to have to drag it out of her. She needs to process what happened, she needs to make a plan to move forward.”

Pearl is right, as usual. Katya sighs.

“I know. I don’t want to be mean, though. She needs to tell me how to fix it; I’m going crazy.”

“Why do you feel like you have to carry the weight?” Pearl’s voice is light, but Katya can sense her budding frustration. She knows Peal would sooner place it on Trixie than Katya, even though she’s just as privy to the situation as either of them.

Katya sighs again, uglier this time, and rests on a hip. She groans.

“Because I love her. And I feel like I did this to her, in a way...I feel responsible for Violet, for what she did, for being seen with Trixie. I know I’m not wrong for who I am, but no one else knows it, and when she’s seen with me it only serves to hurt her. And she can’t take care of herself like I can-”

“Katya.”

Katya’s breath catches in her throat at the sound of Trixie’s voice behind her.

“I’m going,” Pearl says. “Tell her the truth.”

The dial tone sounds in Katya’s ear. She holds the phone to her face, wishing her hair wasn’t in a braid, and blinks until her eyes are watering.

“Katya,” Trixie says louder. Her voice is rumbly, much lower than normal, and Katya realizes she hasn’t heard her say her name in what feels like weeks. “What are you talking about?”

Katya casts her eyes to the floor and slowly spins to face her. She’s leaned against the doorframe, her arms crossed beneath her breasts in her cotton nightgown. Katya can see the goosebumps on her forearms and wonders how long she had been listening before she got out of bed.

“I just wanted to ask Pearl…” Katya shrugs, hands hanging limp. She doesn’t meet Trixie’s eyes, keeps her gaze at her collar bones. “I don’t know how to help you,” she whispers.

Trixie shuffles and stands upright. Her arms pull themselves tighter and her neck all but disappears in her attempt to shrink into herself.

“Who says I need help?”

“Nobody, because nobody sees you but me and I’m too damn scared to say anything,” Katya’s voice rises a little. “But you do. You need help.”

Katya walks the short way to the phone receiver, right beside Trixie’s face, and hangs up the phone. She can feel Trixie’s breath on her shoulder. The sun hits her face and Katya looks at her, observes the golden hairs in her brows and above her lips. The wrinkle between her brows is a permanent fixture now.

“Well, Dr. Zamolodchikova,” Trixie says her name easily, as fluently as her grandparents ever did. “Tell me what I should do.”

“Baby, if I knew, don’t you think I’d have already told you by now? I have no idea what you should do. Talk to me?” Katya throws up a hand. “Let me in, just a little. I don’t know how you’re feeling anymore-”

“Oh, you wanna know how I feel?” Trixie pushes her hair behind an ear and bristles. Her nostrils are flaring and Katya can see the tantrum coming. “Would you like to know how I feel?”

Katya nods and presses against the wall beside her. “I would.”

“Katya, I feel like nothing at all.” She says. “I don’t have a family; I don’t have a place in the society I grew up cherished within. I have nothing at all but the two suitcases I brought with me to your house and you. And what am I going to do with that? Who’s going to see that and say, ‘Oh, wow, Miss Trixie, you’re doing such a good job!’? No one sees me as me, anymore, Katya.”

Katya sniffs as she listens to Trixie catch her breath. Her eyes slide up her tawny nightgown and she easily flits past her hard nipples and swelling chest to find her eyes filling with tears.

She looks at her, really looks at her, and sees a spark in the hollows of her eyes. 

“Now you know how I’ve felt since I was your age,” Katya whispers. “It’s tough. Your problem is that you care what they think, when they don’t think about you at all except to make themselves feel better.”

Trixie pulls back and stands up straight. She can’t hide her shiver, and Katya’s eyes close for a moment at the sight. She presses a hand against the wall. 

“I’m not trying to be mean, Trixie. They don’t care about you. You can’t get caught up on that. We don’t have to stay here, we can leave, but no matter where we go, you will always be haunted by these feelings. Learn to stop caring about what they think. I miss seeing you happy.”

“I miss having a family,” Trixie sneers.

“I’m your family now,” Katya raises her voice to match Trixie’s. “I’m all you have.”

Trixie looks indignant. She works her jaw and Katya know she’s seconds away from hearing Trixie mouth off, say something she’ll regret, or else burst into tears and lock her out of the bedroom for the day. Katya is exhausted, from her head to her toes, and it’s barely seven in the morning. Her head hurts between her eyes. 

“Now, I love you. More than I could ever say.” Katya reaches out with a tentative hand and Trixie lets her touch her shoulder. “I’m going to take care of you, but you have to let me.”

Trixie shuffles on her feet and looks away. Katya knows what she’s thinking, that Katya couldn’t possibly understand what she’s going through, but Trixie finally said something more than a dismissive comment about her feelings and Katya is going to run with it.

“Think about it, okay? I know what I’m talking about.”

Katya moves in closer and presses a kiss to Trixie’s face.

“I love you.”

“I love you, too,” Trixie whispers back. She’s staring out the window still, blinking slowly. “I really haven’t done anything lately, have I?”

She sighs and drops her stiff pose. Katya wraps an arm around her waist and walks her to the couch, where she sits and pulls Trixie on her lap. Her thighs spill over Katya’s and keep her warm as she holds Trixie to her chest.

“I don’t know how I’m supposed to live here, anymore,” Trixie says. “It’s like I have no place at all.”

“Then let’s leave,” Katya offers. Trixie huffs a laugh and shakes her head. “Why not? What have we got to lose? Who’s going to tell us no?”

“I need to get accepted into a college first. It’s been two whole months.”

“You’re well on your way. As soon as it happens, we’re leaving. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Trixie sits up with a small smile on her face. She kisses Katya and runs a hand through her hair as she thinks.

“You’d leave all of this for me?”

Silence settles between them as Katya regards the house that’s been in her family’s possession for three generations. She thinks about the wood walls and supports her grandfather constructed himself, the barn half of the town helped raise sixty years ago. Katya thinks about all the horses that have been broken on the farm, and the worn out trail between hers and Pearl’s houses, and smiles.

“In a heartbeat.”

 

 

The last freeze of the winter strikes Big Rock without warning. It comes on over the course of a weekend, and the promising rain of spring turns icy and coats the roads so barely anyone can venture out into town.

Out in the country, roads go unsalted. After the pavement, the dirt leads nowhere but to hunting grounds or ghost towns, and therefore remain forgotten more often than not. Big Rock turns into a bubble of civilization during freezes; anyone outside a ten-mile radius learns to fend for themselves or stay with family further in town.

The ice is crusted over a good half inch by Friday night. Katya, wrapped up in two of Trixie’s oversized sweaters and three pairs of wool socks, stands outside and chain smokes, watching the sleet pelt against the hood of her truck. The furious wind that came before the ice blew the bright blue tarp right off it. She had watched it from the bedroom window as it tumbled across the field and got caught in the treeline.

She’s outside because Trixie’s moping hasn’t stopped in almost a month, and the thought of being stuck inside with her for more than a day is enough to make her want to tear her hair out. Smoking outside, where she can barely feel her extremities and her lips immediately chap, seems infinitely better than hearing Trixie’s sniffles and sighs from her bath. The spray of ice hitting ice works like white noise in Katya’s ears, and she finds herself leaning against the house and relaxing despite the cold. 

There has been a mysterious rift between the pair since Violet told Trixie’s parents about their relationship. It manifests periodically in short conversations over dinner, impersonal, middle-of-the-night sex, and nights meant for drinking and cuddling that end in half-drunk bottles of wine and Katya sleeping on the couch. Laid out in the dark, she breathes in Trixie’s scent on the cushions and wonders what she did, what she can do. Trixie will turn herself into Katya’s touch and then turn away almost as quickly, and Katya has an idea as to why.

Katya has never allowed anyone the satisfaction of making her feel horrible about her sexuality. Not a week goes by that she doesn’t feel disregarded because of it, but all the same, she squares her shoulders carries their imposed burden on her shoulders like a cross. Her back stoops with the weight of forgetfulness; she sees Trixie following in her steps, but with a worse gait.

Katya flicks her cigarette into the sleet and watches the orange burn out as it falls to the ground. Her toes are numb underneath all the wool; the thought of going back inside so soon makes her heart ache, so she pulls the pack from the back pocket of her jeans and lights up another. 

Through days and nights filled with attempts to cheer Trixie up, Katya has found herself at her wits end, unable to think of anything that could speed up the process of Trixie coming to terms with her new life. So she has resigned herself to standing by, watching for signs that indicate Trixie will need her shoulder to cry on or her words to make her laugh. And even though Katya is able to separate the feelings of others from her own, she can’t keep herself from absorbing Trixie’s depression, her pain that manifests in bursts of anger and tears and strikes Katya with anxiety so fierce it rivals the attacks she had when she was younger.

Her cigarettes ease the aches. Katya smokes until her throat hurts, and then she breathes the icy air deep into her lungs and coughs up smoker’s phlegm before heading back inside.

Side B of the Beatles’ Hey Jude is playing on repeat at the turntable. Katya locks the door as the arm lifts and automatically goes back to the top, and McCartney’s voice serenades her as she pads to the bathroom and rests against the doorway.

The heat of the fireplace reaches the bathroom, and combined with the hot water from Trixie’s bath, Katya feels like she’s in a sauna. Her fingers and toes and cheeks burn with the air, and she wiggles them to speed up the thawing process. 

She watches Trixie, submerged to the chin with the the tops of her knees poking out of the water. Her eyes are closed but she raises a hand in greeting to Katya before dropping it back into the water. Katya pushes herself off the door and sits on the toilet lid.

Trixie is ruddy with the heat. Her bangs are pushed back by one of Katya’s bandanas wrapped across her head, and little beads of sweat form at her hairline and roll down her temples. She heaves a sigh and cracks a bloodshot eye open.

“Hi.”

Her voice is soft and thin, and Katya can tell she’s been crying since she went out to smoke. Katya wants to scream against the smallness of it.

“Hi, baby. How are you feeling?”

Trixie shrugs and opens both eyes to regard the missing chunk of porcelain.

“Kind of like drowning myself. But better than earlier,” She cracks a smile and looks back at Katya, who pulls her face from shocked to pleased as fast as she can.

“Well, hey, that’s good,” Katya nods. She’s suddenly grateful for finishing her smoke break when she did. 

Trixie’s tongue darts around her mouth and she looks away again. She pulls the bandana off her head and rewraps it so it covers her hair completely, tucking in the long strands and tying the fabric off to hold it all together.

“Let’s work this out.”

It comes out of Katya’s mouth faster than she can process, and Trixie pauses in scrubbing her pink skin with a washcloth and soap to look at her curiously.

“What’s there to work out?”

“Whatever is happening between us.” Katya leans forward and rests her elbows on her knees. She’s face to face with Trixie’s breasts bouncing against the bathwater, and she has half a mind to right herself and retain eye contact with Trixie, but thinks better of it when Trixie’s nipples harden in the air, cooler than the scalding water. She grips the fabric of her sweater instead of reaching across the tub to pinch them. 

“I don’t believe anything is happening between us.”

Trixie attempts to sound even, but Katya can hear the anger simmering in her chest. She glances up to see Trixie looking at her with confused and annoyed eyes, pausing her movements to drive her point home before resuming. 

“That’s...kinda the point. What I mean to say is,” Katya continues quickly when she sees Trixie visibly tense up and puff out her chest. “You’re clearly depressed, and it’s okay that you’re depressed, I mean, you have a good reason,” Trixie doesn’t hesitate to splash her as she moves to scrub her feet. Katya sits up in an attempt to look her in the eyes. “But it’s starting to affect our relationship, and I want to fix it before it gets worse.”

“I don’t know what to say to you,” Trixie says dryly. “Can’t you see I’m trying? I don’t know what to do.”

“Let me help you. Let’s...do something stupid.” Katya gestures with her hand in a fit of inspiration. “We might not be able to get out of this damn house but we can at least find something to do. I can do your makeup for you again! That made you laugh pretty hard.”

Trixie smiles again and chuckles a little, but doesn’t look up from the bath.

Katya sits back against the tank of the toilet and watches Trixie as she considers her suggestion. She follows her hands smoothing over her skin with the washcloth, disappearing between her legs and emerging between her breasts after a few moments. Katya bounces a leg and digs her fingers into her sweater harder.

The record is still playing loud against their silence. The bass has always been Katya’s favorite part of any Beatles song, steady and melodic, delivering beautiful lines of music while being foundational enough to make sense. She finds herself bobbing her head along while Trixie washes herself, and she pulls herself from her thoughts when she hears the drain being unplugged.

She gets up and grabs the towel from underneath her, unfolds it and holds it open for Trixie. Trixie eyes it with half a smile and looks up at Katya.

“You were sitting on that.”

“So? It’s warm. You’re welcome.”

“Those jeans haven’t been washed in weeks.”

“I haven’t been anywhere in weeks either, get in here.”

Trixie squeals when Katya lunges on her and wraps her up tight. Katya rests her head on her shoulder, soft and warm and wet, and kisses her neck.

“I know what I want to do.”

Katya pulls herself back at the mischievousness in Trixie’s voice and eyes her warily.

 

 

Two hours and two bottles of wine later, Katya stands on swaying legs in the kitchen, where she promised Trixie she would wait for her. Trixie had skipped off into the bedroom to bring back a “surprise” for Katya, and she can hear her laughing to herself and stumbling into things in her search.

The two had sat down at the dinner table and chugged the first bottle in silence, not even bothering to use glasses. Katya had felt the low level of drunkenness they’ve shared the past few days settle deeper into her skin. She’s warm all over now, the chill of the outside air long gone.

“Don’t come for me!” Trixie shrieks out a laugh after Katya hears a particularly loud bang. “‘M fine!”

Katya’s vision swims just slightly as she laughs and traces the wood grain of the cabinets with her eyes. She’s set on making out a face in the pattern when she hears Trixie running down the hallway, feet slapping loudly.

Trixie turns the corner and stumbles into Katya as she pushes a wad of fabric to her chest. She bursts into laughter, uncontrollable laughter that has her stomping her feet and burying her face into Katya’s neck.

Katya shouldn’t have let her finish off that last bottle of wine, she thinks, but they are iced in- it’s not like there’s any chance of her getting out and making a fool of herself. Still, she should probably baby-proof the house.

“Come with me,” Trixie slurs into Katya’s neck, her tongue licking her vein in her drunken speech. Katya gasps and laughs into her hair and nods. 

“Wait,” Katya mutters when Trixie pulls on the sleeve of Katya’s sweater. 

She tilts Trixie’s face up with the crook of her finger and kisses her gently on dry lips. Trixie stands on Katya’s toes, and she bounces against them in excitement when Katya kisses her, and she opens her mouth to her and moans. 

Katya pushes her against the counter and digs her fingers into Trixie’s waist, the mysterious fabric snug between their breasts. Trixie squeals, and Katya knows it’s because the cold handles of the drawers are digging into her bottom. Trixie is drunkenly warm enough that she doesn’t need pants, though Katya can see the goosebumps rising over her fading tan. She shivers at the feeling and Katya laughs against her mouth, tickles her ribs and bites her lip.

“What did you get for me?”

“Come with me,” Trixie repeats. She pinches Katya’s ass and laughs loudly into her face when Katya barks. “You have it already.”

“Oh.”

Katya pulls back and observes the fabric with squinting eyes, driving Trixie to laugh louder and harder. 

“Don’t laugh at me! I’m old!”

Trixie wiggles to free herself and starts towards the bedroom, a fistful of Katya’s sweater in her hand and giggles tumbling out of her mouth. 

Trixie shuffles backwards to land against the bed. Katya registers the muffled sound of one of her favorite Beatles songs as she watches Trixie’s thighs bounce against the contact. Her peach cashmere sweater is slipping off a shoulder, and she looks positively fucked, beautiful messy curls framing her face and shoulders. 

Her lips are a little swollen from when she cornered Katya on the walk to the bedroom and made out with her for five minutes straight, fingers wandering enough that Katya’s sweaters are now long-gone. She can’t feel the chill in the air for the wine in her veins and Trixie half naked in her line of vision, the biggest smile on her face Katya’s seen in a month.

Katya looks back down at what she’s clutching, and it registers in her brain that the material is white and flimsy. The fabric doesn’t seem to do much at all other than look pretty. As she holds it up in front of herself, it unwinds and hangs limply, and Trixie lets out a quick laugh.

It’s a dress; more importantly, it looks like something a pirate wench would wear in a centerfold, and Katya’s jaw drops as she realizes that Trixie’s actually worn this; it drops more at how much she wants Trixie to wear it for her and call her “Captain.” But it’s her turn to wear it, and she closes her mouth in a moment of sober realization.

The fabric might feel light, but it’s expensive. It flows between Katya’s fingertips with ease as she takes in the ruffled, flowing sleeves and the elasticized top that looks like the dress had stopped being made at the shoulders. It barely looks long enough to be considered a dress at all.

Katya glances back up at Trixie, who’s propped up by her hands and biting her lip mischievously. Her face is flushed even more and she looks like she can barely contain her excitement.

“Are you serious..?” Katya lifts the dress up a little in question.

“Yes!” Trixie bursts into laughter, limbs and spine reaching towards the floor. It makes Katya laugh a little bit too, in that infectious way true happiness creeps up whether or not it’s invited. “Please, Katya, please!”

“You want me-“ Katya lets go of the dress to jerk a thumb towards her bare chest. “To wear this?”

Trixie laughs too hard to respond verbally. She sits up and nods as a tear trickles down her plump cheek.

Katya thinks she can hear Trixie wheeze out a “Please,” and Katya sighs.

“I mean, if it’s already this funny…”

Katya looks back down at the fabric and shakes her head, then turns to walk to the bathroom.  
Trixie hollers in excitement behind her and Katya can hear the bedsprings creak.

“Don’t jump on the bed when I’m not in there!” Katya calls over her shoulder. She turns once she’s in the bathroom to close the door and spots Trixie landing on the mattress with a big bounce and a little pout.

It takes her entirely too long to figure out how to put it on. Once she succeeds, she has a little trouble keeping the elastic up over her chest, it having been stretched out by Trixie multiple times. The thought of wearing something that’s been on Trixie’s body sends a chill up Katya’s spine, and she rubs the soft fabric against her stomach for a short moment before adjusting the dress one final time. She keeps tugging at the hem but it doesn’t budge past the middle of her thigh, and it’s an awkward feeling, having most of her legs showing. She wonders if Trixie would be able to see and touch everything if Katya bent over.

Katya walks back into the bedroom with her head down and eyes staring ahead of her and Trixie’s drunken jabbering stops abruptly.

“What, do I look that awful?” Katya laughs a little. She’s embarrassed, but she’s willing to put up with a lot to make Trixie happy, she realizes, and if wearing a dress for the first time since she was a kid is what makes her happy, then she’s just going to have to get over herself and do it.

“No,” Trixie says softly. “You look beautiful…”

Katya looks up and sees Trixie completely still, on her knees, staring at Katya with big eyes and a little gaping mouth. She blinks once, twice, and then her hands are flitting back and forth, beckoning Katya towards her. Katya shuffles forward, an unfamiliar breeze billowing between her legs.

“You look like a fucking princess…” Trixie breathes. “Here.”

She quickly unwinds the plaits in Katya’s braids. Her fingers snag against a few knots and Katya just barely feels it- Trixie looks like she has no clue she’s doing it at all. Her sweater is right in Katya’s face, the material rubbing against the tip of her nose as Trixie kneels up to fluff the sides and back of Katya’s hair.

Katya lifts her hands to cup Trixie’s breasts and holds them, heavy and hot, as Trixie works. Trixie hums, and Katya’s content to stand there, grabbing her favorite tits and having her favorite woman play with her hair. She kisses the valley between her breasts and buries her face in as Trixie works.

“Done!” Trixie announces, and she sits back on her heels with a big grin. “Look.”

Katya takes a moment before she turns to look at herself in the mirror over the dresser, and her breath catches.

She doesn’t look bad at all; in fact, she looks really good, if a little bony in the overflowing fabric. The sleeves only come to the middle of her forearms where her muscles bulge and push at the elastic. She smiles to herself and pulls a little at her hair to fluff it out more. Trixie’s got it flipped over to one side, but it’s pulled off her shoulders, and Katya’s collar bones are on full display, her tanned skin standing out against the stark white of the dress. 

“Not half bad…” She mutters. 

Katya meets Trixie’s eyes in the mirror, and she’s still kneeling on the bed, staring intently back at Katya with an unreadable look.

“So are you happy?” Katya asks. 

Trixie nods. “I didn’t...think it would be this good. And I had high hopes.” 

Her eyes rake down Katya’s figure and settle where the lace applique of the dress’ hem meets her strong thighs.

“Katya,” She breathes. “Let me fuck you like that.”

 

 

Monday morning brings a thaw to Big Rock and warm enough temperatures that Katya sweats underneath her cashmere sweater. Trixie still bundles up in a coat and cardigan, and they trudge to the truck through thick mud on a mission to buy groceries.

The trip marks the first time Trixie has ventured into town in over a month. Katya briefly wonders on the drive in if Trixie is going to make it, or if she’ll have a meltdown and refuse to get out of the truck and demand Katya drive her home. 

Katya has done the grocery shopping alone since the incident, and she’s happy to read off a list in Trixie’s pretty cursive and throw items into a cart as quickly as possible. But in a brief moment of positivity Sunday evening, the couple agreed to drive into town together, and Katya held Trixie to it through the pouts and near breakdowns.

There is no promise that their trip will pass without an event. Both of them know this; there was no need to say it out loud when they saw it in each other’s eyes as they dressed. In all likelihood, something will happen, and Katya can only hope she can diffuse it before it gets out of hand.

They track mud into town, flinging dried bits of dirt onto the Piggly Wiggly parking lot as they pull in. 

Katya cuts the engine and doesn’t move but to hold Trixie’s hand searching for hers on the car seat. It’s clammy; she brings it to her face and kisses her knuckles before giving her a good squeeze and dropping it.

“Ready?”

She looks over at Trixie, perfectly made up and staring at the meandering customers entering and exiting the store. Trixie nods, finally, and Katya jumps out of the truck and rounds it to help her down.

Katya can handle the lingering looks in town. She can stomach hearing housewives whisper to each other as she passes them in the supermarket, the occasional “dyke” hurled at her by a pimply teenager dared by his cronies. Her skin is thick enough to withstand almost anything after years of verbal abuse in Big Rock; what it can’t withstand is seeing Trixie flinch when they turn their gaze to her.

Trixie’s femininity combined with her sexuality leaves everyone around them at a loss with how to respond to her, and Katya is more scared of that than she ever has been of their perception of herself.

People know what to do with Katya, where to put her. She fits easily on their spectrum, a solid Dyke, but Trixie seems to make them second guess themselves. Katya’s counted more double takes and rapid rounds of blinking than she can remember; Trixie’s face turns red every time and she hides behind her hair, or else Katya’s shoulder. 

It’s the blatant staring. Katya can’t protect Trixie from their eyes, she can’t make them understand that a woman that looks like Trixie can love women, too, in an A-line skirt and a blouse. Katya can’t stop and explain to every Nancy and Sue at the deli counter that Trixie’s gripping onto Katya’s flannel because she’s scared to be seen with her. She can’t explain to Trixie that she’s not crying at night because it hurts her feelings.

They walk side by side as Trixie pushes the shopping cart underneath fluorescent lights. She points and Katya pulls products from shelves and cold cases, hands Katya the list of deli meats they need and picks at the plastic grip on the cart as they wait for the employee to finish their order.

Katya spots Trixie’s mother, the same figure she saw in a blur behind her father’s angry face, and nudges Trixie’s back in the opposite direction. She can feel the blood leave her face, knows they both much look like spectres haunting the linoleum walkways for different reasons. She doesn’t tell Trixie. 

The cashier flinches when Trixie reaches into Katya’s back pocket to take out her wallet. Katya wants to reach over the register and sock him in the jaw for how he stares at her with his mouth gaping open. Trixie fishes for the bills as fast as she can and she stumbles over her fingers, her red blunt nails glinting in the blue supermarket light. Katya’s eyes don’t leave the cashier as he stares.

He looks to Katya when giving back change, and Katya turns away from him, bumping his outstretched hand and scattering coins across the counter. She grabs the bags and stalks out of the store, leaving Trixie speed walking behind her, wallet clenched between sweating hands.

On the way home, Trixie looks at her nails and pushes at invisible cuticles. She straightens her pantyhose and works at a smudge on her patent heel, anything to keep her head below eyesight. Katya doesn’t bother to drive smoothly or to dry the tears pooling in her eyes. The Chevy hits all the potholes in town; the bags between them tumble onto the floorboard and Trixie rushes to collect bread from underneath the accelerator, double check the eggs at her feet, catch the lettuce that rolls around in its plastic wrap.

Trixie puts up the groceries at lightning speed. She shoves the vegetables in their bin inside the fridge without trading out the old ones, leaves the bread on the counter instead of sliding it inside the breadbox. 

Katya follows behind her and tidies up without a word. Her socks don’t make a sound on the floor; Trixie’s heels echo over her whispering.

“I can’t do it. I can’t do it. I can’t do it…”

Katya’s hands slow to a stop at the breadbox when she catches Trixie’s voice. She leans against the counter and waits for her to turn from the sink, where she’s unnecessarily washing her hands. 

Trixie dries them roughly and rests them against the lip of the counter, where they shake in their grip. Her breaths come short and staggered. Katya catches a glimpse of a tear falling and she pushes herself to stand and walk over to her.

At the muttering of her name, Trixie bends forward in a sob. Her hair tumbles into the sink and the ends turn dark with the water still draining, and Katya lunges to pull it back over her shoulders and wrap her hands around her waist. She leans into her back and rubs her nose against her blouse, breathes in her perfume as she cries brokenly. 

Seconds turn into minutes, the golden light of the early sunset cutting into the kitchen and illuminating the motes of dust hanging in the air. Katya watches them float until it’s too dark to see them in the dusk, and then she stands and turns Trixie around, articulates her limbs to position her upright.

Trixie stares at the wall behind Katya as she’s spoken to.

“You need to tell me what’s wrong. I want to help you. What do you need from me?”

Katya is seconds away from dropping to her knees and asking Trixie to elope with her, anything to make her smile and take her away from their own private hell. 

It’s something Katya has thought about more often than not, and she knows she’s ready- she isn’t sure if Trixie is, though. Katya wants nothing more than to shove the simple silver engagement ring with the tiny diamond she found in an antique store onto Trixie’s finger and pack her Chevy full to bursting in the dead of night. She has the money, and she has the anger pent up inside to fuel her for a good few hundred miles.

She keeps the ring in her pocket, just in case.

Trixie sniffs heavily and looks up at Katya with bloodshot eyes, mascara pooled beneath her eyes and smudged down her cheeks. Katya cups her face and brushes against her swollen nose with her thumb before attempting to wipe the smudges away.

“There’s no room for us here. There never has been. You were lucky they tolerated you for as long as they did, but now? With everyone knowing, and how they stare at me…” Trixie shakes her head. “We don’t belong here.”

“You know we don’t belong anywhere,” Katya says quietly. Trixie squeezes her eyes shut. “We have to make our own space- that’s what I did. That’s what we’re going to do together. If you think for one second I’m going to let anyone bully you because of who you are…” Katya sighs. “Let’s go somewhere else, we can find a big city. Maybe we won’t have to try so hard there, maybe...there will be others like us, more than just our neighbors.”

Trixie pulls Katya’s hands from her face gently and walks to the dining room table to sift through the mail.

“Katya, we have to have a reason. Neither of us have anything lined up, and we can’t just…”

Trixie stares intently at an envelope. She drops the rest of the mail to the floor and rips the top open, pulls a letter out with trembling fingers.

“What is it?”

Katya sidesteps the mail to stand before Trixie. She watches Trixie’s eyes scan the contents of the letter, then go back to the top and read it again. The color drains from her face and her mouth falls open as she leans drops the letter to her side and leans against the table.

“I got in.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hello again!
> 
> I'm back, and I hope you're ready for the chapter that really has it all.
> 
> A note: I mention Pride here, though the first real Pride march wouldn't have happened until the summer of '70, so a few months after this chapter. I changed it around because I can. :)
> 
> That's really the whole mood for this chapter- I did it because I can. I was so wrapped up in the drama and conflama of this story that I'd forgotten how to really have fun with it. So that's exactly what I did this time!
> 
> There's only one chapter left and it should go pretty quickly, so hopefully y'all won't have to wait as long for that.
> 
> As always, feel free to chat on tumblr- I'm kirschebombe

Katya has never been comfortable with the unknown. Her history has been cemented by her family, her position in society that has never been anything but unwavering. For being a question mark in others’ eyes, her life has been surprisingly predictable.

She hasn’t been clueless about anything bigger than what to make for dinner since her parents sent her away; since she’s known Trixie, she’s found herself clueless more than once. 

She fights the anxiety with the look on Trixie’s face when she packs up family heirlooms and countless coffee mugs. They have no place to move to in Nashville, but Trixie seems to be unaffected. Cardboard boxes line the walls of their home, and Katya stubs her toes on them more often than not. Trixie floats around them gracefully, stacks them up with strength she’d kept hidden for her own benefit. 

When all is said and done, Katya knows she’s going to follow Trixie wherever she goes. The image of her padding along like a dog behind her self-assured woman taunts her, even though she knows Trixie views her as her equal. When Trixie speaks about her plans, she says we, she pinches Katya’s thin cheeks and pulls on her braids excitedly. Where Katya is frozen with indecision, Trixie is warm and dynamic with plotting. 

 

 

Trixie’s tear-stained cheeks are plump with a grin Katya hasn’t seen in what feels like ages. She reads her acceptance letter out loud over and over again, her tone getting louder and brighter with each pass.

Katya can't help but to swoop in and hug her, pick her up by the waist and spin her around in circles. They scream excitedly like children, suspended between seconds. Trixie digs her nails into Katya’s sides and she can feel it through her coat. She's laughing loudly into Katya's ear, stumbling over the last of her tears and anxious hiccups. 

The rumbling anxiety stops for a moment. Nothing matters as much as Trixie’s happiness and her weight pressing on Katya’s chest. Katya breathes in happy breaths and her lingering perfume and holds her tighter. 

Trixie sputters a plea to be put down, and Katya lets her down but keeps her close by the lapels of her peacoat to plant a kiss firmly on her lips. There’s no time to adjust and their noses bump together, and Trixie snorts into Katya’s mouth.

“I have to pee.” Trixie wheezes through her laughter. Her knees knock together and she folds in on herself in mirth. “Please, let me go I have to pee!”

Katya sweeps an arm under her knees and carries her down the hallway to deposit her before the toilet, then to the bedroom to deposit her on the blankets. Trixie’s idle chatter punctuates Katya's heavy and fast footsteps over the threshold.

Katya unlaces Trixie’s boots with reverential fingers. She slips them off as Trixie lays back, arms behind her head, and laughs to herself.

“I’m going to college!”

She sounds so happy that Katya has to glance up to be sure it’s still Trixie wiggling her toes against Katya’s palm. Her big smile shines, the halo of untamed blonde hair around her shines brighter. Katya slips off her wool socks and slots a finger between her toes.

“Are you going to teach me all the big words you learn?”

Trixie’s eyes dart from the ceiling to Katya’s with a knowing look. Katya can feel her blood rushing through her chest and she grips her feet harder as she leans over. 

“Tell me.”

“Uh-huh,” Trixie breathes. 

Trixie jumps at Katya’s coat rubbing against the arches of her feet and Katya pulls back to yank it off. It drops to the floor with a heavy thud and Trixie groans, her legs spread involuntarily, the heavy wool of her skirt falling between her knees. The temperature of the room raises ten degrees, Katya’s eyes blur as Trixie knocks her knees together, back and forth.

She pulls an arm out from under her head and lazily trails it down her body, fingertips catching at her neckline, exposing a heaving chest, and then her thin leather belt. She tugs at the wool of her skirt and inches it up over her thighs. Katya’s fingers blindly find the buttons on her shirt and she pops them off with increasing speed, racing Trixie to the top.

Trixie’s lips are parted coolly. She watches Katya with eagle eyes, measuring her every response. She slides the palms of her hands up her naked thighs and her skirt bunches beneath her wrists; she digs her nails into her pale skin when Katya mutters under her breath and stumbles out of her boots.

“I’m going to learn French,” Trixie says softly, and Katya groans. Trixie’s thumbs hook onto the top of her satin underwear. She lifts her hips into the air to shimmy them down. Her stomach and thighs jiggle as she kicks them down to her ankles. “I’m going to fuck you and say whatever I want to you, and you’re never going to know.”

“You aren’t going to teach me?” Katya’s shirt hangs at her elbows as she works her belt off her jeans, fully fucked over mentally. Trixie shakes her head.

“Maybe. If you’re good.” Trixie smirks. She tosses her underwear to the floor carelessly. Katya's eyes follow it to find a dampened patch and she fights the urge to shove them inside Trixie. She imagines they would be soaked in a matter of seconds; she looks back between Trixie’s legs and her mouth goes slack with the confirmation.

“If I’m good?”

Trixie laughs and grabs at the air with her hands towards Katya.

Trixie pulls her over the low footboard to rest on her stomach and brings the back of Katya’s hand up to kiss.

“Take your sweater off, baby,” Katya creeps her free hand underneath the wool to scratch at her heated skin. “Let me feel you.”

“Take it off for me.”

Katya wastes no time in adding it to the growing pile of clothes on the floor. Trixie unhooks her bra and then she’s completely naked underneath Katya, rutting gently against the denim hip of her jeans. Her lashes flutter and she grips Katya’s hand tighter.

“I want a new wardrobe,” Trixie breathes. Katya agrees immediately, would forever agree to anything Trixie demanded of her if it meant she'd hold her tight against her and let her lay her head on her soft breasts. 

She giggles delightedly and continues. “And two new fountain pens, just in case I lose one. And a new pair of Mary Janes-”

“Christ.” Katya rubs down onto Trixie’s thigh.

“I'm not done!” She suggests a position higher up on her chest with the nudge of a hand that Katya follows immediately. Her knees fall onto either side of Trixie’s soft, naked hips, and her heat cuts through Katya's jeans. “I'm going to need a new haircut, obviously. Oh, and a satchel for my books! And a manicure…”

She pauses her list to stare at Katya's hand thoughtfully, turning it over and back again.

“What else?” Katya says. “I'll give you whatever you want.”

It’s desperate, and Trixie laughs outright at her before dragging her teeth over the thin skin on the back of Katya’s hand.

“I want this inside of me.”

Katya blinks and stares at the hand Trixie clutches.

“You mean...like, the whole thing?”

“I do.”

“You think it’ll fit?”

Trixie laughs and Katya bounces on her chest. She grunts, embarrassed by her laughter. She hasn’t even gone to college yet and she’s making her feel like an idiot. But Katya can’t deny how much it makes her even wetter.

“Yes! I’m built to have a baby, I can take your hand.”

Katya grinds down on her belly softly and extracts her hand from Trixie’s grip. She moves to lay her head beside hers, runs fingers through her hair gently as she speaks. 

“Promise to tell me if I’m hurting you, or if you want me to stop.”

“When have I ever not?” 

“That’s not a promise.”

She relaxes underneath her with the motion of Katya’s fingers grazing her scalp. Katya’s kisses Trixie’s cheek and jaw over and over again, little kisses that tickle Trixie more than anything. She can’t stop kissing her, touching her hair and rubbing her leg against her hip; she wants all of her at the same time.

“I promise,” Trixie sighs. 

The image of Trixie on her back, legs bent at the knee with Katya’s wrist peaking out from inside of her is almost too much for her to handle. That she hasn’t thought of this before is even more wild; that Trixie has thought of it enough to be able to communicate the idea so concretely makes her push up and back and look her in the eyes.

“I want to watch you take all of it, like a good girl.”

“Oh.”

Katya hoists her up the bed to land on the pillows, “like the princess you are.” Trixie returns her hands behind her head with a smirk to watch Katya work.

Her breasts spill out on either side of her, and Katya takes them in her hands and kisses between them, bites the sensitive skin underneath them and pinches a nipple hard while she sucks the other one into her mouth. She tugs at them with her teeth and fingers until Trixie whines and begs for her to stop. 

A hand sneaks out from behind Trixie’s head and locks itself on the back of Katya's. She pushes her down her torso, pausing at her belly for Katya to nip at her, then continues until she's nestled between her legs with her tongue pressed flat against her folds, her nose pressed up against her clit, unmoving.

Trixie is soaked already; Katya can feel herself catching up, turning the crotch of her denim useless. Trixie’s thighs press tight against Katya’s ears when she presses a sucking kiss to her clit then moves back down to taste her, warm and salty and sweet on her tongue.

Katya hears Trixie moan loud and low. Trixie keeps her legs up and together, suffocating Katya, but Katya couldn't care less. She works at her gently, opening her up with soft licks and well placed fingertips, until her legs are spread apart as far as they can go. The fat on her thighs keeps them propped up slightly, enough for Katya's broad shoulders to fit against her perfectly. 

She presses her tongue to the side of her clit and Trixie’s hand comes back to guide her over it, back and forth, until Trixie’s whining is louder than the sound of Katya's fingers slipping in and out of her. Her jeans rub against her uncomfortably as she ruts against the bed. She knows Trixie wants her to keep them on and it makes her moan into her, aching for a shred of Trixie to rub up against. A spare corner of her mind bargains for Trixie’s ankle, the hard plain of her shin. Katya knows she’s going to be ignored and it makes her pussy ache even worse.

When she's soaked to the wrist, Trixie holds her head still with a vice grip and Katya licks her fast, spurred on by her bucking hips and fingers clutching the back of her head so hard it burns.

Trixie has never been so desperate to come, and she does with a shout and a whimper, tightening and loosening around Katya's fingers and soaking the blanket beneath her.

Katya sits up and kisses Trixie languidly, letting her taste herself. The silence of the house is punctuated by her fingers still working Trixie and it pulls her from her mind, a gaping black space.

“I'm ready,” Trixie breathes, all too aware of Katya's hesitation to add a third finger, as if they were strangers to the act.

Katya nods and sits back on one knee, props her other foot up on the bed. She stares at Trixie’s pink, swollen pussy eagerly accepting her ring finger. She feels loose around her.

“This is the easy part.” Trixie moans. Katya grunts and scissors her fingers, playing with the tension of her walls. “Just wait.”

“You sound like you've done this before.”

“I've tried, but it's hard to do to yourself.” She breathes out daintily as Katya's fingers curl inside of her at the remark. Katya gapes at her and makes an embarrassing sound that sends Trixie into laughter. Katya can feel her flutter around her fingers and it only serves to deepen her blush. “What's the matter, cowgirl? Too much for you to handle?”

“I need you to tell me every single detail once I'm not inside you,” Katya mutters.

At Trixie’s insistence, Katya’s pinky is tucked in and she pushes gently inward. She gives with more ease than Katya expected, and she rocks her fingers in and out to spread her wetness.

“I can tell you in French when I'm fuckin’ you,” Trixie gasps and rocks her hips up sharply. “God-! I'll tell you all about it. How good it was.”

“As good as this?” 

Trixie shakes her head quickly. She clutches at the roots of her hair and the bedsheet, her skin blotchy and beginning to sweat.

She looks slightly pained, the kind of pained exhibited after Katya spanks her or pinches her nipples. Katya doesn't stop working her fingers and uses her other hand to rub her clit.

“Too much?”

“Keep going.”

Trixie’s moans grow louder and closer together the longer Katya fucks her. She rests at four fingers, fucking her more thoroughly than she ever has, Trixie’s soft pussy ten times more hypnotic with the extra digit. Her gaze never leaves the sight of her fingers disappearing inside of her, coming back soaked and spreading her wetness between her legs. It drips down her ass onto the bedsheets and Katya curls her fingers up again at the sight.

“You're making a mess.” she breathes. “Such a good girl.”

Trixie pushes Katya's other hand away to rub herself in time with her deep thrusts and everything between Katya’s ears goes to mush.

The bed frame creaks with Katya's movements. She can feel her wrist beginning to get sore and rolls her eyes at her winter weakness. In the fall, she would be able to go forever. 

Trixie’s moans get sluttier as she rubs herself. Her fingers bump into Katya’s palm and her stomach flutters. Soon she's halfway upright, watching and begging for Katya to add her thumb, her entire hand up to the remaining digit inside of her easily.

“Please, please, Katya, I need it,” She mumbles.

“Alright,” Katya soothes. “Lie back. Don't move, okay?”

“Yes, mama.”

The air in the room stills and Katya holds her breath without knowing. She watches almost from outside of her body as she pulls her hand out slightly, her thumb inching closer to the middle of her palm. She grabs Trixie's thigh as she tucks her thumb in.

The wedge shape looks surprisingly intimidating to her, her entire hand folded up and already almost halfway inside her. Trixie coaxes her with little sighs and mutters to keep going. Her knuckles catch at Trixie’s entrance, the muscles unwilling to budge, and Katya gently brushes her hand away to rub her herself, making tight circles around her clit with her thumb.

She works at her until she blinks and her hand is pulled inside in one swift motion. She stops rubbing Trixie as she moans loudly, her entire body tensing up.

“Are you okay?” Katya’s voice cracks.

Trixie whimpers and nods without relaxing. Her eyes are shut tight, her nose scrunched.

“I won't move until you say so.”

Katya stays still as ever, hovering over Trixie, and watches her process the new sensation, her face relaxing bit by bit. She processes it herself, how hot Trixie is and how tight around her wrist, but relaxed around her fingers. She wants to spread her fingers out as wide as possible and feel her completely.

Trixie rotates her hips and moans, and Katya can feel her begin to ease up around her.

“It’s so big,” Trixie lilts. She hesitates to shift her hips again, back and forth, and moans loudly once she gains the courage. “Oh, God, it’s so big.”

It takes all of Katya’s energy to not curl her fingers in like they’re wont to do and fuck her till she screams.

“Good?” 

Trixie nods. Her fingers clench and unclench the bedsheets.

“You can...move.” She breathes.

Katya slowly drags her fingers in towards the palm of her hand and they slip into place seamlessly. It makes Trixie gasp, then throw an arm across her face and groan.

“Move.”

Her moans catch in the back of her throat as Katya tests her limits. She twists her fist side to side, then barely moves it up and down. When she does both, Trixie yells into her arm. Her nipples look painfully hard; Katya bends forward to take one into her mouth and suck gently as she fucks her just as gently, until Trixie is fucking her back.

Everything is hot and wet and tight. Katya can't tell where she ends and Trixie begins in her sex-drunk stupor. Their moans blend together, the creaking of the bed spurring Katya on to fuck harder.

When Katya regains focus she looks down to see Trixie grinding against her fist, moving it so that her opening sucks against Katya's wrist.

“Such a good girl,” Katya breathes. “Taking it so good.”

Trixie yelps and then chants Mama over and over again until her voice is little more than a continuous whine. Her hips begin to stutter and Katya holds her breath again, stills her own movements so Trixie can come how she needs.

Suddenly Trixie is deathly quiet. Katya feels her clench around her hand and wrist so tightly it almost hurts, then feels her flutter all around her as she comes with a broken yell. Trixie shoots up, eyes wide and unseeing in her orgasm, her jaw slack. Katya grabs her face with her free hand and kisses her roughly. She licks the roof of her mouth, her teeth and her lips, unable to stop herself, so aroused from Trixie’s orgasm she can feel herself close to one as well.

They catch their breaths and Katya fumbles for a moment removing her fist until Trixie pants directions, and it emerges soaked and a little cramped. She ignores how wet it is and hurriedly pops the button and fly on her jeans, shoves them off and pushes Trixie back on the bedding to position herself over her face.

“Trix, please, that was so good,” She whines.

Trixie licks Katya greedily, covering her face in her wetness and gripping her ass with strong fingers. Katya lasts mere seconds on her tongue, and she comes with a shiver and a painful release of tight muscles.

 

 

Trixie takes longer than she ever has to dress for Busted Saddles, but with PBS being broadcast out of Chattanooga as of the previous week, Katya can’t seem to care.

She sits on the couch, head propped up and flopped to the side, and watches The Open Mind and Firing Line with glazed eyes. Trixie scampers to the fold-out ironing board in her underwear to iron her hair straight and Katya doesn’t move a muscle.

Half of the people being interviewed have no impact on her; she doesn’t know them from Adam, but she watches as if she does, tuts when they make a snide comment on whatever sector of public affairs they’re affiliated with. 

It’s hard to make herself care in her insulated part of the world, regardless if she’s comfortable. The riots and what they call Pride, and all the people like her that have been rounded up and treated egregiously for how they feel- Katya can relate to them, and she’s angry about it all, but living so far out in the middle of nowhere seems to remove some of the sting. She watches her shows with a heavy heart, half-guilty for not being out there fighting with the rest of them, half-guilty that she can’t find it within her to get up and actually do it. Her stomach aches.

Webster’s sits dog-eared and smudged on the coffee table near her feet. Trixie sits in her lap, heat-treated hair warm on Katya’s neck, and attempts a French braid from her position.

“I’m going to get wasted tonight,” Trixie confides to Katya, leaning back and down a little to show her amused face. Her eyes are glimmering and for the first time in forever it’s not because she’s been crying. 

“You and the rest ‘a Big Rock,” Katya laughs. “Have fun.” Her eyes slide down the length of shiny blonde hair and land on her chest, barely contained by her blue satin bra. She doesn’t hide her stare, hard and roving over every inch of her skin, and Trixie watches her do it. It gives both of them goosebumps. Trixie’s thighs squeeze around her hips as if they were her own. “You going out like that?”

Trixie laughs at the strain in Katya’s voice and sits back up to finish her handiwork.

“Will you drink with me? Please? Like the first night we met!” She bounces excitedly, sending her chest right into Katya’s line of vision. She attempts to dart around her to watch Richard Heffner’s follow-up question to- suddenly Katya can’t remember the guest’s name- but resigns to sit back and hold Trixie’s waist. She snaps the elastic wrapped around her hips and Trixie squeaks. “Please! We haven’t done anything fun in so long.”

“I thought we just had a lot of fun!” Katya grins.

Trixie swats her fingers snapping the elastic with her spare hand before picking back up where she left off on Katya’s braid.

“We did,” She admits lowly, and Katya laughs. “You know what I mean!”

“Well, someone’s gotta carry you home. I’ll have a few drinks with you.”

“And we can dance!” 

Trixie ties off the end of Katya’s braid and sits back on her knees, hands on Katya’s shoulders. Katya squeezes her waist and nods. 

“Will you let me lead this time?” Katya asks. Trixie tucks her chin in and widens her eyes before bursting out into laughter. “I can do it!”

“We’ll see, Miss Left Feet!”

 

 

Trixie doesn’t ask for anything. She demands it, assuming she’ll get what she wants, and Katya can’t fault her for it. Years of being spoiled have gone to her head, and what would be considered a massive flaw in anyone else by Katya is marked off as a quirk, something that gets under her skin when she’s tired or hungry. Every other time Trixie assumes she’ll get what she wants, Katya only scrambles to confirm.

Which is why Katya is sporting the ugliest button-down she’s ever seen. She isn’t even sure where Trixie found it, deep in the recesses of her closet; she’s never seen it before. Or maybe she has, and she’s just blocked out the hideousness.

The pattern is nondescript, simply because of the massive amount of patterns clashing. Her torso looks like a toddler smashed puzzle pieces together, determined to make their own picture, in monochromatic yellow.

Katya didn’t even resist, which sends a massive wave of disappointment down her back, but it retreats when Trixie grins at her and picks her up to spin her around the bedroom, Katya’s toes dragging along the rug. Trixie’s happiness makes it bearable.

She’s thankful it’s still cold outside, that her Carhartt covers most of the atrocity. She doesn’t want to think about the looks she’ll get when they’re inside Busted Saddles, but she doesn’t think they’ll be looking at her.

Trixie’s hair falls down to her waist when it’s straightened, parted down the middle like Cher with her bangs pushed back behind her ears. Her cigarette pants are a complementary deep yellow, a gesture that Katya appreciates now but knows she would have loathed just a short year before. She knows Trixie’s white shirt will be Bourbon-stained before the night is over.

Katya couldn’t talk her out of her heels, and she gripped Trixie by the elbow as she slipped and slid towards the truck, patches of ice hidden in the darkness. Her fur coat was warm against Katya’s bare fingers.

Katya’s got her right hand buried in it as she drives into town, tucked underneath it to warm the top of her hand on Trixie’s thigh.

“I can’t believe you won’t teach me how to drive manual,” Trixie mutters as she stuffs a cigarette between Katya’s lips. She strikes a match against denim jeans and lights it, forcing Katya to inhale instead of rebut. “I can do it!”

“There’s ice on the road!” Katya muffles. The wheels catch on an invisible patch as if on cue and Trixie yelps dramatically, arms flailing. Katya gains control of the truck before she quiets down. “See? You can’t even handle it as a passenger.”

“I want to learn before we go to Nashville.” Trixie crosses her arms and huffs.

Katya switches hands on the steering wheel to crank down the window just enough to exhale out of.

“‘Before we go to Nashville’ does not mean, ‘When there’s ice on the road.’”

Trixie whines incoherently. Katya flicks the poor excuse to shut her up out the window and cranks the glass back up. She switches hands again on the wheel and pokes her fingers roughly between Trixie’s lips to land on her tongue.

“If you don’t stop it I’m gonna whoop ya.” 

Trixie groans and slides her tongue between Katya’s fingers and she swerves a little. Trixie’s knee knocks against hers painfully and Katya hisses, then yelps when Trixie bites down on her fingers. “Stop it! I’ll teach you. Don’t be a brat.”

She extracts her fingers from her mouth and wipes them off on her jeans. Trixie cackles loudly before affecting a pout and the worst apologetic look Katya’s ever seen from her.

“I’m sorry,” Trixie mumbles. She grabs Katya’s hand and wedges it between the tops of her thighs. “Will you forgive me?”

“I’m about to pull over and give you somethin’. You wanna go to Busted Saddles or not?”

Trixie blows her bangs out of her face and crosses her arms.

“That’s what I thought.”

 

 

The crowd inside the club is reflective of the packed parking lot outside. Ginger hadn’t even taken money from Katya, claiming she’d “paid enough lately,” and sent them inside with a withering look she’d never seen on the older woman before.

There’s barely any room to move, let alone dance, but Trixie spots a bare space thanks to her heels and drags Katya to the floor first thing. Katya catches glimpses of stares as she’s pulled forwards, and she gives who she can looks to warn them of saying anything at all.

She’s painfully aware they stick out like two sore thumbs; the bright yellow of their outfits don’t help their situation any, either, and Katya knows she’s going to have to fend off a few idiots before the night is over. 

Trixie, however, appears blissfully ignorant of the situation as she grips Katya’s waist to dance. Her eyes don’t rove, they stay locked on Katya’s, true to the first night they met, and she sways gently side to side, dictating Katya’s movements once she slides her hands underneath her sheet of hair to clutch her fingers behind her neck.

She slides easily in her heels, and Katya knows she shouldn’t be surprised as she’s deeply in love with a former debutante, but she is, and Trixie laughs when she remarks on it. Trixie gives her a butchered two-step in response and they dissolve into laughter, standing still in the middle of the floor and getting bumped around for it.

“I need a drink if I’m going to be this close to men for the first time in forever,” Trixie says loudly, earning a look of derision from a lithe man next to them with his arm wrapped around a taller, cowboy booted version of himself.

“Perk of living in the middle of nowhere; let’s go.”

A steady stream of shots later has Trixie leaned up against the bar, chatting idly with the bartender. Her insistence on standing up is only slightly comforting to Katya, who’s seated beside her, still nursing her first beer. The refusal of a seat means Trixie still has some fight left in her; Katya bets if their roles were reversed, she’d be well on her way to dozing off. 

Trixie mentions her college acceptance and earns a free drink; by the time it’s sucked down Katya can see the glaze in her eyes beginning to form.

Her arm snakes around Katya’s waist and she’s thankful she offered to hold their coats for the rest of the night. Trixie’s grip is surprisingly strong, and Katya basks in the way it feels set against the eyes that flit over them every time they move.

The bartender is in the middle of telling Trixie about how he managed to dodge the Vietnam draft and not get his ass kicked when the crowd around them drops to a hush.

Katya sees Trixie turn from the corner of her eye. She moves to ask her what’s wrong and sees her face contort and her fingers turn white against her glass. 

“Trix?”

She ignores Katya. Her eyes are set on something that Katya can’t register when she turns around to follow her gaze. When Trixie blindly put her glass on the counter behind her and pushes through the crowd towards the other side of the club, Katya stands to follow her and sees her target.

Violet stands facing away from them across the dance floor, drink casually held in the air by a limp hand. Her french twist is high and tight, severe and fitting the rest of her black, slimlined outfit. She laughs at something and Katya’s eyes flick to Trixie; she watches her shoulders tense and her speed pick up. 

Katya knows there’s nothing she can do, but she can’t stop herself from trying to catch up with Trixie. She wants to beg for her to rethink the decision that’s surely set in stone, she wants to take care of it for her, anything to keep Trixie’s reputation from getting even worse. She drops her beer bottle at a random table she passes and doubles down on her speed, almost losing Trixie in the packed crowd. The coats weigh her down even more and she grunts in frustration.

Everyone seems to have some sort of idea what’s happening when Trixie gets closer. The crowd begins to part, and those in Violet’s group turn their attention on Trixie, hands on her hips and barely faltering in her heels.

She can hear someone yelling already, and it isn’t Trixie. It sounds like Willam, Violet’s crony, whom she’d last seen almost a year before in her expensive car, parked out in Katya’s driveway for Violet to toss her overnight bag in and leave. Katya can remember Willam’s voice, utterly Midwestern, like no one else’s. It was the last voice she heard that day, telling her to go fuck herself and cackling into the sunset with her ex. She almost wishes she was the one who Trixie wants to fight.

The voices of the crowd are blocked out momentarily by the recollection of Trixie’s vow: “I’m going to find her and beat the ever-lovin’ hell out of her, and I hope everyone sees.”

Katya’s feet carry her faster than they ever have before, through the whirlwind of the dancefloor and stumbling bargoers, and land her at the edge of the crowd.

“Hey, asshole!”

No one looks as calm as Violet does. She pivots on her heels to face Trixie with an expression that’s so calm it’s borderline humored, as if she had been waiting for this moment with anticipation.

And Katya knows she has. Violet loves nothing more than to tear someone’s life apart, especially when they have something she wants. Katya isn’t sure if it’s her herself that Violet wants, or the happiness she and Trixie have built together, but there’s something behind her eyes when she squares Trixie up that insists she’s right.

 

“Violet,” Katya can hear the barely contained anger in Trixie’s voice and her heart skips a beat. She can’t help the grin spreading across her face.

“It took you long enough,” Violet rolls her eyes. “Thought you’d be braver than this, waiting months.” 

“You better keep your mouth shut if you don’t wanna go to Fist City.”

“Fist City!” Violet barks out a laugh and the tight circle of friends behind her echoes it horrendously.

Violet’s head snaps to the right and Trixie’s fist follows, smearing ruby red lipstick onto her knuckles. No one makes a sound as Violet stumbles in her heels. She lands against Willam and she grunts, pushes her to stand and sends her back towards Trixie, who’s bouncing on the balls of her feet and shaking her hand. Violet’s wild eyes search for Trixie’s face as she regains her balance, and when they settle on her, Violet growls and lunges towards her.

A clawed hand slices through the air and Katya hears Trixie holler as she jumps back. The crowd rushes in, finally convinced of a fight worth watching, and Katya loses sight of the two, shoved back behind burly, drunk men. 

The roar of the bar turns deafening. The neons and dimmed lighting don’t help Katya’s focus, and she finds that she can’t see or hear anything that’s going on. Her stomach turns; the thought that this is the second time she’s not been able to defend Trixie spins around her otherwise empty mind. She digs her nails into the jackets tossed over her arm when she hears Trixie yelp. Katya bites her lip and steels herself, pulls the ache from her stomach and stomps a boot on the dirty floor.

She pushes through the crowd to catch glimpses of shiny hair flying, buttons and pearls rolling across the floor, someone’s heel knocked off. The two women are still standing, a mess of black and blonde hair around their faces and hands. Grunts and yells and an array of curses fill the air between the hooting and clapping of the crowd. The soft crooning of a country ballad is barely heard, and it all culminates into a noise so grating Katya finds herself clenching her jaw and her fists, ready to punch the next person that bumps into her.

The fight seems to last forever and for no time at all. A bouncer makes his way through the crowd easily, sending the half-drunk crowd stumbling behind him in his wake. He pushes the two away from each other just as Trixie lands on top of Violet with her fist wound back. Katya watches as Trixie lands one final punch and then she’s being dragged by the armpits towards the front door.

Katya follows them, tripping past excited patrons running to watch as Trixie is ousted. She pushes them out of her way angrily and sees Trixie looking up at her, kicking at the floor and wrestling to come undone from the bouncer’s grip. She yells for him to let her go but he ignores her, and Katya simply follows them out.

Somewhere in the crowd someone yells that Violet’s knocked out, and Trixie lets out a triumphant sound as her boots scrape the threshold of the double doors.

She’s dropped onto the gravel with a grunt, and Katya lands on her knees in front of her, panting and tossing their jackets aside to look over her.

“Fuck you too!” Trixie flips off the bouncer. He ignores her as he goes back inside. “You know I was right!”

“Are you okay? Trixie, holy shit…”

“I’m fine,” Trixie says as Katya inspects her: three long scratches down the side of her face, a swiftly forming black eye and a split lip. Katya knows one side of her face is going to balloon and she winces at the thought. She pushes Trixie’s hair behind her ears and repositions herself on the gravel to get a closer look. “I’m fine, I’m fine.”

“She really gave it to ya, didn’t she…” Katya mumbles. She wipes old blood from underneath Trixie’s lip and she hisses at the pressure. “We need to call Pearl.”

“I had to do it.”

Trixie’s eyes are clear, even though Katya knows she drank enough to be properly drunk. But she looks disturbingly sober, as if she’s in a completely different dimension, gazing back at Katya. 

“There was nothing I could do. I made a promise.”

“You’re not a quitter,” Katya smiles, and Trixie shakes her head. She touches Katya’s shoulders and Katya brings a hand to her face. Violet’s lipstick is mixed with blood from both of them. Trixie’s knuckles are cracked. Katya kisses her palm instead.

Katya stands, collects their jackets and helps Trixie to her feet slowly, looking over her ruined outfit for signs of injury. The yellow of her cigarette pants is dingy. Little flecks of blood and remnants of alcohol stain the fabric; her blouse is in even worse shape.

“You kept your shoes.” Katya grins. She kisses the top of Trixie’s head and doubles down on her grip around her shoulders. “I’m proud of you.”

Trixie looks up at her curiously.

“You are?”

“How could I not be? You stood up for yourself.”

“You got both of you kicked out of Busted Saddles, congratulations.”

Ginger sounds angry as hell, and when Katya turns her head she sees she’s right. 

“What the hell was that! Fighting, in my establishment? Katya, what the fuck?”

“You can’t say she didn’t deserve it!” Katya says. Trixie huffs out an agreement and Ginger gives her the once over with annoyed eyes.

“I can’t believe you’d let her do this. After everything that’s happened lately; don’t you want the spotlight off you? For once in your life?” Ginger yells. “I tried to stick up for you, you know. Her too,” she gestures lazily in Trixie’s direction. Trixie and Katya grumble a non committal response. “And this is how I’m repaid. I told everyone you were just in a bad spot right now, that Violet did what Violet does and you two were just innocent victims- now look! Violet’s going to have to go to the hospital.”

“She is!” Trixie looks at Katya triumphantly and laughs.

“Yes, dumbass, you knocked her out. Her nose is halfway across her face.” Ginger doesn’t look impressed at all, the worry lines between her brows even deeper than usual.

“Don’t call her a dumbass,” Katya steps forward quickly. “She’s obviously smarter than you are; she knew the only way to settle this was to shut Violet up once and for all.”

“Listen, I don’t have time for this,” Ginger waves her hands. “I came out here to tell you you’re banned from Busted Saddles, permanently. Don’t even think about picking Pearl and Jinkx up, you hear? I really thought better of you, you know.”

Katya can feel Trixie withering beside her. She moves closer to Ginger and stares her down.

“You know somethin’?”

Ginger squares up and meets her gaze.

“Huh.”

“You’re just as awful as the rest of them.”

Ginger’s eyes widen. Her skin blooms ruddy underneath the yellow lights of the parking lot.

“Just because you’re siding with Violet doesn’t mean your life is going to be any easier. You should know it will make it worse.”

Ginger works her jaw embarrassedly. Her eyes dart to the darkness over Katya’s shoulder. Someone pokes their head out the door to call for her and she barks at them to wait.

“You can go, there's nothing left to say.” Katya says. A deep disappointment brings out the premature wrinkles around her eyes, between her brows, her history of smoking exaggerated around her mouth. “And don't worry about us. I’d never come back to a coward’s bar, anyway.”

Trixie gasps in delight as Katya holds the small of her back and walks away. The parking lot is silent as they leave, as Katya deposits trixie into the middle seat, as she sprays gravel across the patrons’ vehicles and the side of the building when she peels out of the parking lot.

The road unfurls in front of her headlights, and she lets herself follow it blindly, cruising and gazing at the beams’ horizons.

“I beat the shit out of her,” Trixie smiles. “It felt good.”

“You did. It was the right thing to do, I don’t care what anyone else says.”

Trixie doesn’t respond. She turns up the radio and sits still, watching the shadows of treelines pass in the distance. She lets Katya hold her hand, limp in her lap. After a few minutes, she speaks.

“We have to leave.”

Katya nods and murmurs in agreement.

“I’ve never liked this place, anyway. Too small. I knew I wouldn’t amount to anything here but some man’s housewife.”

“Well, they’re certainly not going to remember you like that now.”

She can hear Trixie breathing heavily over the rumble of the engine, and on a straightaway she looks over to see her grinning, her split lip bleeding all over again. Katya holds her hand the rest of the drive home, clutching the gearstick around her knuckles to teach her how to shift.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now Katya stands, looking at the land she grew up on, the land that has been in her family since they immigrated all those years ago, and she knows she won’t see it again. It feels right, the entrance of a new decade and the exit of the past that only ever did Katya any good when she forced it. She stands with her hands on her hips, surveying the plot of land, and wonders if the next owner will tear down her family home, maybe erect some building for public use. Or maybe a newlywed couple will move in, and they’ll get a dog who can run the length of the horse pen. Maybe they’ll have a baby and build onto the house- that had always been her plan, if she could ever work out the logistics.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't care for tears, much like Katya, so I'm going to be short here.
> 
> I want to thank everyone who has ever read even a shred of this story. Writing Busted Saddles was one of the biggest and best accomplishments of my life so far, and I could never have done it without my readers, my friends, and those who sent me anons on tumblr (@kirschebombe) hollering about the Butch Cowgirl Realness. It's been a long ride, with a massive space in between updates, but it's finally finished.
> 
> Things come to you when you least expect them, and this chapter was certainly no exception. I didn't know I would be writing a good third of this chapter the same day I'm uploading it, but here I am. I pulled together three different versions of how I've written the final chapter- because yes, even when I wasn't posting here, I was anxiously figuring out how to carry on the story- and they fit together in my head. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy this short but sweet chapter, and again, thank you for reading.

Trixie wakes Katya up with a nudge to her shoulder that rolls her toward the edge of the bed. She does it three times, each nudge more urgent than the last, and Katya grunts awake and looks over at Trixie with one cracked, glaring eye.

It takes in the sight of Trixie’s face, bruised and with dried blood crumbled across her lower cheek, and she blinks awake. The night before comes rushing back to her in glimpses of neon lights, undulating crowds and Trixie tossed onto the gravel. Katya pushes against the mattress and turns to face her in the morning light. She looks uncomfortable.

“Are you okay?”

“We need to get up if we’re going to leave at a decent hour today.” Trixie’s voice is clear where Katya’s is clouded with sleep.

And just like that, Trixie is out of bed and sailing across the bedroom in her nightgown. It flows pink behind her, and Katya watches half in awe, half in confusion, as Trixie sifts through boxes marked “Blouses, “Bottoms,” and “Underwear.”

Trixie dresses quietly, and Katya watches her. She catches sight of her soft, white belly, where a yellowing bruise has formed beside her bellybutton. It must have been a residual hit or where Violet tried to get a grip on her as she went down. Katya wants to crawl across the bed and kiss it, run her tongue over it and pull her back onto the mattress with her, but when Trixie pulls the gown off completely Katya sees her face set with purpose and she thinks twice.

Katya turns to face her alarm clock and finds it gone. She remembers Trixie frantically packing up the rest of their belongings when they got home the previous night. She doesn’t know how Trixie knows what time it is, but finds that she doesn’t care. She knows everything she wants to know.

“What time is it?”

“Nine oh’ eight. Pearl and Jinkx will be over in twenty minutes for breakfast. You want me to set you some clothes out?”

She’s already rifling through Katya’s boxes. She tosses a white undershirt onto the bed and Katya scoots towards it to put it on.

“Yes, ma’am. Will you gimme a kiss?”

Trixie pauses in her search for good work pants and turns her head to face Katya. It’s turning red from her bending so far over, her fat cheeks pushed up towards her eyes. It doesn’t help her offbeat attitude, and Katya imagines it hurts her wounds.

A moment passes where Katya fully expects Trixie to return to her search, leaving her request hanging in the air awkwardly, but then Trixie is standing up and padding over to her. There’s a barely noticeable limp, and Katya pushes to hang her legs off the bed in her direction and wrap them around her thighs when she meets her. Trixie holds Katya’s clothes between them, just under her breasts, and Katya hopes they smell like her all day.

Trixie leans down, lips pursed. Her lids flutter shut. This close, Katya can see the slept-in makeup, the mascara clumped and crusted around the corners of her eyes. She can’t remember the last time Trixie went to bed with her makeup on. Not even in her worse state had she ever neglected her favorite nighttime routine.

“Don’t kiss me,” Katya mumbles. Trixie opens her eyes in a hard glare. Her nostrils flare a little. “I don’t want you to hurt your lip. Let me kiss you instead.”

Trixie’s look softens and she nods, and Katya presses her lips to the corner of Trixie’s mouth that isn’t currently housing a split lip. She can still feel the fever in in the skin, the tightness of it underneath the swelling. Katya kisses it lightly, can’t help but run her tongue against it and suck gently. Her fingers hook around Trixie’s lace underwear, aching to be underneath them like they weren’t allowed to after the bar.

Katya pulls away when she gathers the strength, and Trixie hovers, still with eyes closed and a parted mouth. She breathes in deep and opens her eyes, smiles a little at Katya, and then presses her clothes into her stomach.

“Get ready,” She says softly. “I’ll make your favorite.”

By the time Katya emerges from the bedroom and successfully dodges the boxes lined up the hallway, she can smell breakfast going and hear the sound of the percolator. Her mouth waters, and she remembers they didn’t have dinner last night. She had contemplated a leftover dinner roll when she was in bed, but Trixie’s sleeping form wouldn’t let her out of her grip. Now her stomach rumbles and she picks up her pace. She trips over a box rounding the corner to the living room and Trixie giggles, not even having to look to her left to know what happened.

“I’ll be glad when we’re finally settled down.” Katya sighs. She heads towards the percolator and stands facing it, coffee mug in hand. She stares it down, waits for the rumble to subside, and then pours out a measure. “You want some?”

“I couldn’t possibly.” Trixie expertly flips an egg in the pan.

Katya knows to get out of her way when she decides to cook, so she sits at the kitchen table, testing her coffee every few seconds and burning her lips. She can’t help but think that it can’t sting half as bad as Trixie’s lip does.

She wants to talk about the fight, now that the adrenaline has worn off and she’s slept on it, but finds herself shy around the topic. Katya doesn’t imagine that Trixie will yell at her, or cry, even. In fact, Katya has no idea what Trixie would say if asked about it. The potential lack of words, so unlike Trixie at all, intimidates Katya into keeping her mouth shut.

But the feeling that something is going unsaid between them still lingers. Trixie cooks egg after egg in silence, toast pops up from the chrome toaster and she butters the slices before they get a chance to cool off. Her morning routine, however rarely practiced, is still flawless.

“You cooked for your family, didn’t you?”

Trixie pauses long enough to glance over at Katya with a wry smile.

“Yes.”

“Did they make you?”

“Let’s put it this way,” Trixie wipes her hands on her apron and faces Katya. “Unless we wanted to eat burnt toast every morning, I was cooking. Daddy never wanted to spend money on help, and my mother can’t cook to save her life. That’s why everyone at Perot’s knows me by name.”

Katya hums and returns to her coffee, Trixie to the last egg to be flipped.

“I appreciate you cooking for me sometimes,” Katya says. “You’re gonna make me fat once I hit forty.”

“That’s my plan,” Trixie grins. She winces a little and the grin goes away, but her playful tone stays. “I wanna get you all plumped up so I can sleep on you comfy. You’d look cute with a little belly.”

“You don’t like me now?”

Katya stands and inches towards her, pulling her workshirt up bit by bit. Trixie does a double take and inhales, shoves the frying pan off the hot eye and snaps the heat off. She blinks slowly as she drags her fingertips along the hard plane of Katya’s stomach.

“I like you now,” Trixie whispers. “I wanna fuck you now.”

Her fingers are already drifting towards the waist of Katya’s jeans, and Katya groans when they slip underneath and snap the waistband of her underwear against her skin.

Katya comes with the formica digging a hard line across her lower back, her stomach fluttering with her orgasm and Trixie moaning sympathetically along with her. Her jeans and underwear are pooled at her ankles, and she leans forward with trembling muscles to pull them back up when Trixie washes her hands.

“You’ve got a lot of energy this morning,” Katya pants. She manages to gather herself and reach over to smack Trixie’s ass before sitting back down at the coffee table, affecting what she hopes is a casual demeanor in the event of Pearl and Jinkx arriving. She thinks she can hear them talking outside.

A wave of realization his her when she sees Trixie look out the tiny window above the sink and purse her lips in a smile.

“What can I say? Last night’s still stickin’ to me.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask you how you’re doing.” Katya fiddles with the handle on her coffee mug. She doesn’t look up when she sees Trixie walking towards her.

Trixie’s fingers curl underneath her chin and pull it up. She still smells like Katya, and it sends a tiny jolt through her core. She isn’t one for branding her partner, but she can’t deny the satisfaction of her smell lingering on Trixie, how her fingers will be far enough away from Pearl and Jinkx that they won’t pick up on it over breakfast, but Katya will know.

“I’m doing fine.” Trixie says resolutely. “I’m a little shaken up, but I’m fine. This isn’t my first time around the track.”

Katya’s eyes bug a little and Trixie laughs. The back door opens before Katya can respond and she turns to greet Pearl and Jinkx, who both look half asleep as they stumble inside. Outside of Farmers Market season, Pearl has never been known to be an early riser. It doesn’t surprise Katya that Jinkx would follow suit.

There’s only two chairs, so Katya sits Trixie on her lap and Pearl takes the floor at her own insistence. Trixie serves coffee and then breakfast, and they eat in silence. Pearl and Jinkx wake with each sip of their coffee, and once the plates are washed, dried, and packed into the box by the sink, they’re ready to talk.

“So, we got some interesting information this morning.” Pearl glances over at Katya with a smirk.

“Oh?”

“Something about both of you being banned from Busted Saddles for life? Does that mean Ducky’s is going to have to be our permanent spot now?”

Jinkx laughs and holds her mug out for Trixie to refill. Trixie chuckles, too, but Katya can only muster a half smile.

“Well, you two aren’t banned. Why would we make you go to Ducky’s with us? Such a sad old place.”

Trixie sits back down on Katya’s lap and Katya gives her thigh a loving squeeze. Pearl stands and rests against the back of Jinkx’s chair, looking back and forth at Trixie and Katya with earnest.

“Whatever happened at that bar last night doesn’t matter. I know you two; you wouldn’t get yourselves banned without a damn good reason. And I have my theories on what happened, but at the end of the day, I know you’re the ones in the right here. Ginger’s been looking for an excuse to get us the hell out of there for ages.”

“A high school friend of mine called.” Jinkx tacks on. “Trix, do you remember Farrah?”

Trixie nods and sips her coffee, as if the whole thing doesn’t involve her in the least.

“She was there last night. Said you gave Violet a run for her money. I don’t know much, since Farrah was three sheets to the wind even when she called an hour ago, but I do know that whatever you did to Violet was well deserved.”

“I beat the shit out of her, Jinkx.” Trixie says casually, then sips her coffee again. Pearl guffaws and looks at Katya incredulously. Katya merely shrugs in response, but she can’t help the smile creeping onto her face. “I did. She hurt me, very badly. And that’s not even mentioning what she’d done to my woman before I came along. And I’d had it. I promised Katya that if I ever saw her again I’d beat the living hell out of her, and I did.”

“She’s still Satan’s right hand woman, I’m sure,” Pearl toasts Trixie.

“I could never beat all of it out of her- it’s in her DNA to be a nasty little thing. Bless her heart.”

“What do you think about it all, Katya?” Jinkx asks innocently enough. They all look at her expectantly, Trixie leaning back a little to meet her eyes.

Katya can only shrug again. “It’s not my place to have an opinion. I support Trixie, and if she thought that was the best thing to do, then I’m glad she did it.”

Trixie beams at her and gives her a kiss on her temple, and soon she and Jinkx are talking about the best poultice to use on Trixie’s bruised knuckles and Pearl is telling Katya about the TV show she watched last night on the new channel.

The coffee mugs are cleaned and placed with the dishes and then Pearl and Katya load the table and chairs into the bed of the truck. Katya knows not everything will fit in one trip, and after some deliberation they remove the table and chairs to slide the bed in first. Trixie and Jinkx sit splayed out on the carpet where the bed was, disassembling the frame.

 

___________________________________

 

It’s 1970, and Katya will admit to thinking she’d never make it this far in life. It always seemed like such a far away year, and every passing one that brought about new social chance she hoped would bring her time to be vindicated. The Civil Rights movement soothed her nerves, gave some privilege to those who deserved it more than her, but she knew it wasn’t enough to right all the wrongs. And then the Summer of Love happened, listened in on crackly radio waves, and Katya wanted to be at Woodstock. And Trixie’s angel face, and suddenly the sixties were gone in the blink of an eye.

Now Katya stands, looking at the land she grew up on, the land that has been in her family since they immigrated all those years ago, and she knows she won’t see it again. It feels right, the entrance of a new decade and the exit of the past that only ever did Katya any good when she forced it. She stands with her hands on her hips, surveying the plot of land, and wonders if the next owner will tear down her family home, maybe erect some building for public use. Or maybe a newlywed couple will move in, and they’ll get a dog who can run the length of the horse pen. Maybe they’ll have a baby and build onto the house- that had always been her plan, if she could ever work out the logistics.

She still hasn’t been vindicated, but she thinks Trixie is kind of like her vindication. She’s delivered her from evil, given her a clear path to a better future, and wants to see her succeed alongside her. Katya can’t imagine moving into the seventies with anyone else.

 

__________________________________________

 

Moving is probably never easy. That's what Katya tells herself as she shoves the tailgate shut on her belongings for the last time.

  
The house is empty now. A house that had held generations of Katya's family, immigrant farmers and homemakers and those who had dreamed of a life away. They were all dreamers, the one thread outside of DNA Katya holds in common with them. She had always found a way to tamp her dreams down, but today she was finally making one come true.

  
Katya was leaving Big Rock for good.

  
It had taken her and Trixie a good chunk of the summer to find a nice enough home outside of Nashville for the money they had available. While they weren't picking between two lean-tos, they clearly were not on the same eschelon as those where they were searching to live. Many of the homes in the country were outrageously expensive, something Katya balked at the moment their realtor told them the average price for a two-bedroom house out in the fields. Katya had bitten the bullet when Trixie fell in love with a ranch house and cashed in almost all of her savings, securing them a perfectly good home in which to grow old together.

  
College courses in Nashville were a are two weeks away, and Trixie is anxious as all get out to settle into their place. Katya can't blame her; for all the lack of comfort she's putting herself through to have a better life, she should be able to at least come home and escape it all. Escapism couldn't be acheived with boxes lining the walls.  
Moving had taken place over three long weekends, finding new ways to pack up dinner plates and records and old trinkets Katya had forgotten she'd kept when her grandpa died. Trixie rolled them up in newspaper and tucked them away in boxes Pearl had pilfered from the back of the grocery store, and Katya stacked them two-high in the bed of her truck and held it all down with a tarp.

  
This would be their last trip, with the things they had been regularly using during the move. It was such a small load that Katya feels like they've forgotten the other half of their belongings intended for the trip. But it's all moved out, as one final inspection of the house proves. After Katya insisting they double check it all, Trixie had pat her butt and left her to wander the house alone for the last time.

  
It all looks strange to Katya. She finds herself walking through the empty rooms as if they were still full, dodging the couch and the coffee table.   
She sighs heavily as she sits on the floor. As she observes the room that looks smaller than it ever has, her eyes are pulled to a scratch on the baseboard. Looking closer, she can just barely make out an inscription:

_Katya + Pyotr ~~42~~ 43_

It’s written in her brother’s chicken scratch, with her perfect penmanship correcting him.

Katya crawls closer and stares.

All at once, she remembers the New Years Eve spent inside the house with her brother closest in age, both too young to partake in the family’s traditional bonfire. She and Pyotr had been left to their own devices, and at age six and-a-half she’d already had plenty of experience correcting her more chaotic brother’s behavior. She laughs when she remembers Pyotr pushing the bookshelf to the side and begging her to sign her name beside his, her refusal and insistence she be the lookout, and her rapid chastising in a language she barely remembers as she corrected the year. Their mother had come in to check on them just as Pyotr had pushed the shelf back into its place, and no one had been the wiser.

Katya touches the insignia and smiles. After a moment, she takes out her pocket knife and carves to the right of it:

_Katya + Trixie 70_

Trixie's in the truck, wearing Katya's Stetson and making some crummy joke to earn a laugh from teary-eyed Pearl, who's leaning against her door. She strokes Trixie's hair as they speak, winding a curl around her finger and then letting it bounce back, over and over again.

  
Katya wants to take Pearl with them, but she and Jinkx are getting serious, if there's any more room for that with them, and there is no way Pearl is leaving now. Maybe a year ago, when Katya's Playboys had been her saving grace. But then Katya was waiting for something. Back then she hadn't known what it was.

  
She kicks a rock out of her way and sidles up beside Pearl, wrapping an arm around her waist. Their flannel rubs together the way only flannel does, and it makes Katya shiver. Pearl gives her a big smile, too big for the pain evident in her eyes, and Katya returns it.

  
"I'm gonna miss you." Pearl says. "Plain and simple. I don't know what I'm gonna do without my partner to come help me harass the townspeople."

  
"I thought that's what Jinkx was for," Katya laughs. Trixie tuts from over their heads and she looks up at her. Their smiles match.

  
"You're responsible for yourself, you hear?" Trixie points a finger at Pearl, who rolls her eyes. "I don't wanna hear when I call that Jinkx has been mothering you. And don't mope around, either, because you can always come and visit."

  
"Yes, ma'am."

  
"I wish she could be here," Katya sighs. "it's too bad she had to help in the gardens today."

  
"She told me to give you this," Pearl takes Trixie's hand and kisses the top of it sweetly, then turns to Katya. "And to give _you_ this."

  
Pearl's hand swats the seat of Katya's jeans with the force of a thousand suns, all before she can blink. Trixie's flattered blush turns into an obnoxious laugh when Katya jumps a foot into the air and hollers.

  
"What was that for?"

  
"She said she doesn't know yet, but you'll probably earn it before she sees you again."

  
Trixie's laugh hiccups into a sigh as Katya rubs the sore spot on her ass. The humor between them dies down again and Katya knows what's coming next. She can feel it in the way Pearl fixes her face and grabs Katya's hand.

  
"Don't, Pearl."

  
But it's too late. A big, fat tear rolls down Pearl's narrow cheek. She sniffles and then Katya hears Trixie sniffle, too. She can't bear to look up at her. Before she has to out of girlfriendly duties, Pearl speaks.

  
"You come back and see me, now. I really don't know how I'm gonna get on without you around here, but I'll find a way. And if any old bastard tries to buy this place I'll burn it to the ground before they can hold a bible study in the living room."

  
"You've always had my best interest at heart."

  
Katya smiles at Pearl serenely, but she can feel the tears beginning to well up behind her own eyes. She hasn't cried yet, hasn't planned on crying ever, not about something so happy as moving out of town, but seeing Pearl like a little girl waving her dearest friend goodbye tears at her heart.

  
There had been no one else by Katya's side like Pearl, not until Trixie came into her life. Pearl has been the one sturdy thing keeping Katya's life from falling to pieces many a time. And many a time, Katya has been that same sturdy thing for Pearl. Their friendship has weathered innumerable storms. Without one, the other loses some of her power.

  
But Katya won't let the tears fall just yet. She wants to cry into Trixie's armpit in the middle of the night, in the cold dark of their new house with their new air conditioner. She hopes it will evaporate her tears so they won't chill Trixie's nightgown. She wants her woman's plump fingers wiping her tears away and blotting up snot with her white t-shirt. Crying in the daylight just isn't as satisfying.

  
And she knows if she cried now, Pearl would be completely inconsolable.

  
"I love you, Pearlie." Katya pulls her in for one last hug, patting her back so that it sounds like a drum under her hand. "Take care. I'll call you when we get there."

  
Trixie leanes out the window and hollers goodbye at Pearl as Katya pulls away. In the rearview mirror, Katya sees Pearl waving goodbye, one hand in her pocket. The house gets smaller and smaller, and soon Katya sees nothing but the dust.


End file.
